Analysis of Speech Characteristics of Acquired Stuttering after Brain Damage

Abstract

    This paper describes speech characteristics of two cases of acquired stuttering due to brain damage In case 1, the acquired stuttering occurred after a closed head injury, while in case 2 it occurred after a cerebro ascular accident. Speech samples were analyzed according to the classification scheme for developmental stuttering devised by the Japan Society of Logopedics and Phoniatrics.
    Previous studies reported only five speech symptoms as characteristics of acquired stuttering, i. e., “sound and syllable repetition,” “prolongation,” “block,” “pause” and “break.” In addition to these five symptoms, our cases showed another 11-12 symptoms, such as “intertwined symptom,” “connected symptom,” “complex sympotom” and “string symptom.” Our cases also demonstrated some nonspeech motor behavior which differed from the type of motor behavior that usually accompanies developmental stuttering.
    According to the previous reports, adaptation effect was not observed in cases of acquired stuttering, but our case 1 showed this effect. In case 1, the number of symptoms decreased and the rate of simplification of symptoms increased during the recovery process.