Processing of Self-Repairs in Stuttered and Non-Stuttered Speech

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Speech Production and Perception

Background:

• Listeners utilize speech disfluencies for predictive processing of linguistic input.
• The impact of atypical disfluencies, such as stuttering, on this predictive ability is not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how stuttering affects listeners' predictive processing of speech.
• To determine if atypical disfluencies disrupt the prediction of upcoming linguistic information.

Main Methods:

• A visual-world eye-tracking experiment was conducted.
• Participants heard sentences with self-repair disfluencies from a speaker who either stuttered or did not stutter.
• Eye movements were tracked while participants viewed visual displays with predictable target entities.

Main Results:

• Listeners showed robust predictive processing of self-repair disfluencies, consistent with prior research.
• The magnitude of the predictive effect was significantly reduced when the speaker stuttered compared to when they did not.
• Stuttering impaired the listeners' ability to predict upcoming words.

Conclusions:

• Listeners' predictive processing of speech is negatively affected by stuttering.
• The ability to model a speaker's production system is disrupted when the speaker stutters.
• Atypical disfluencies interfere with the predictive mechanisms used in speech comprehension.