The effects of autonomic arousal on speech production in adults who stutter: A preliminary study

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of autonomic system reactivity and response on the speech production of people who stutter. Participants included three adults who stutter (AWS) and three who did not (AWNS). An aversive acoustic stimulus was paired with a set of neutral pictures to condition an autonomic system response as measured by skin conductance response (SCR). Speech production probes were placed in trials where a conditioned autonomic response was expected in order to record fundamental frequency (F0) and temporal acoustic measures of segments of speech from utterances at different levels of autonomic arousal. Analyses of SRC indicated that AWS had a significantly greater autonomic response to the aversive stimulus compared to AWNS. All of the AWS, but none of the AWNS, acquired a conditioned response. In addition, AWS exhibited F0, voice onset time, and frication durations that were positively correlated with SCR. This study provides evidence that AWS show a greater susceptibility to classical conditioning, along with higher autonomic reactivity and related changes in speech production than AWNS. Findings are discussed as they pertain to risk factors in the development of stuttering.