A visual analog of auditory choral speech: Its role in stuttering inhibition
Poster

Vikram Dayalu
Communication Sciences and Disorders, East Carolina University

Tim Saltuklaroglu
Communication Sciences and Disorders, East Carolina University

Joseph Kalinowski
Communication Sciences and Disorders, East Carolina University

     Abstract ID Number: 61
     Full text: Not available
     Last modified: May 20, 2003

Abstract
This study examined fluency enhancement in people who stutter via the concomitant presentation of silently mouthed visual speech. Ten adults who stutter recited memorized text while watching another speaker silently mouth linguistically equivalent (LE), and linguistically different (LD) material. Relative to a control condition, in which no concomitant stimulus was provided, stuttering was reduced by 71% in the LE condition versus only 35% in the LD condition. Despite being an ‘incomplete’ second speech signal, LE visual speech possesses the capacity to immediately and substantially enhance fluency, whereas LD visual speech lacks in this capacity. It is suggested that for second speech signals to be effective fluency enhancers, people who stutter should be able to extract relevant speech gestures to compliment their intended production, thereby compensating for possible internal inconsistencies in the matching of speech codes. Due to a relative paucity in redundant speech cues, speech presented through visual channels appears to require linguistic equivalence or similarity in order to make possible the external to internal matching required to facilitate fluency.