Eliciting Stuttering in Laboratory Contexts.

Area of Science:

• Speech and Language Pathology
• Neuroscience
• Psychology

Background:

• Stuttering (stuttering) is characterized by contextual variability, complicating reliable elicitation in laboratory settings.
• This difficulty limits research comparing stuttered and fluent speech.
• Previous methods for inducing stuttering in controlled environments have faced challenges.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce and validate a novel method for eliciting stuttered speech during laboratory testing.
• To overcome the limitations of previous approaches in generating stuttered speech samples.
• To facilitate future research on the correlates of stuttering.

Main Methods:

• A semistructured clinical interview was used to leverage stuttering anticipation in 22 adults who stutter.
• Participant-specific anticipated and unanticipated word lists were generated.
• These word lists served as stimuli in a second visit to test the method's validity.

Main Results:

• The novel method produced a near-equal distribution of unambiguously stuttered (43.6%) and fluent (43.5%) utterances.
• A small percentage (12.9%) of utterances were classified as ambiguous.
• The approach demonstrated superior performance compared to prior methods for stuttering elicitation.

Conclusions:

• This novel approach effectively elicits stuttered speech in a laboratory setting.
• The method's success in generating balanced stuttered and fluent speech samples is promising.
• It provides a viable tool for future studies investigating neural, physiological, or behavioral aspects of stuttering.