An electropalatographic analysis of stutterers' speech

Electropalatography (EPG) was used to investigate tongue-palate contacts from three adult stutterers during fluent and dysfluent speech and the results compared with normative data. Recordings were made of 22 read sentences, a reading passage and a conversational sample. The results showed that the lingual/palatal contacts of some phonemes during periods of stutterers' fluent speech consistently differed from that of the non-stutterers. Furthermore, stutterers produced greater intrasubject articulatory variability. Finally, during successive repetitions, the EPG patterns often became less similar to the target (or 'normal') configuration.