[Clinical application of synchronised multimedia scanning for the objectification of laryngeal events in stuttering:...

We have tried in this preliminary work to observe what kind of mechanical laryngeal events were corresponding to the disfluencies heard while stuttering, especially in the pre-phonatory and phonatory blocks. Basing our observations upon numerised and synchronised multimedia recordings (videonasofibroscopic long duration recordings synchronised to the acoustic recordings of speech corpus) we also tried to figure what happened when an adult speaker used a fluency enhancing method such as the Erasm. Authors advanced the hypothesis of a closed larynx in two or three folds while the stuttering blocks and some even described those folds.

We have recorded the stutterers and non-stutterers (N= 3) as well during speaking tasks as in cough, snuffling (N= 2), swallowing and sustaining a vowel. Secondary, the patients had to use the Erasm method, for the productions they had first stuttered. We wanted to focus rather on the supraglottal components movements.

In our study we haven't visualised any laryngeal double or triple folding while the blocks. But we did observe abnormal laryngeal behaviours, which recall spasmodic or myoclonic type of movements with: Tremors of the base of the tongue, a strong lateral pharyngolaryngeal constriction, quick successive up and down involuntary movements of the larynx, anarchic and paradoxal attempts of opening the vocal folds, at the moment of the intention of speaking. We did also objectify a real improvement in those aberrant movements by using the Erasm method.