Intonation-Altered Choral Reading and Stuttering Frequency

Park, Jin

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2011;16(3): 295-303.

Jin Park^`

박진(Jin Park)

ABSTRACT

Background & Objectives
It has been well documented that choral reading significantly reduces stuttering frequency in adults who stutter. The underlying mechanisms behind this effect remain unclear, however. By manipulating prosodic cues, especially intonational cues, the present study aimed to examine whether a fluency enhancing effect is observed even when the prosodic information of the choral feedback signal is significantly manipulated.
Methods
Eight American English-speaking adults who stutter participated in this study. The subjects produced sentences under several speaking conditions (i.e., typical solo-reading (TSR), typical choral reading (TCR), intonation-altered choral reading (ICR), frequency-altered feedback (FAF)), and speech fluency, indicated by percentage of syllables stuttered (%SS), was computed and analyzed to examine if there were significant differences across the experimental conditions within the stuttering group.
Results
This study found that participants who stutter spoke fluently in all experimental conditions (TCR, ICR, and FAF) other than TSR. Discussion & Conclusions: Based on the results of the ICR, it can be argued that accuracy (or matchedness) of prosodic information associated with intonational cues did not affect the extent to which choral auditory feedback enhanced fluency.

Keywords: 말더듬 | 억양 | 운율 | 합독 | stuttering | prosody | intonation