Abstract
This report briefly discusses the following aspects of physiological research on stuttering: 1) physiological measurement of voicing and articulatory movement in stutterers and nonstutterers, 2) auditory processes in stutterers and nonstutterers, 3) speech motor processes in stutterers and nonstutterers, 4) a genetic approach to stuttering.
It was revealed that some young stutterers tended to have difficulty stabilizing and controlling laryngeal movement even during the perceptually fluent speech. Stutterers may have difficulty in motor programming speech behavior. The young stutterers showed a greater percentage of no ear and left ear preference than the controls, but the older stuttering subjects did not differ significantly from the control groups. The research on brain stem electrical responses of stutterers and nonstutterers revealed that females had significantly faster rates of neural transmission than males. DAF research showed speech motor processes dynamically. Susceptibility to DAF in stutterers was significantly higher than that in controls suggesting that stutterers relied on auditory feedback for speech more than nonstutterers. Greater refinement in nosology for understanding of the genetic aspect of stuttering is needed.
