Differences Between Stutterers' and Nonstutterers' Short-Term Recall and Recognition Performance

Abstract

Longer rehearsal times presumably reduce the efficiency of rehearsal and, hence, of short-term recall. The present experiment examined the question as to whether the slower subvocalization rate of people who stutter is correlated with inferior short-term serial recall and recognition performance. Rate of overt articulation was taken as a measure of rehearsal time. Lists of four nonlexical CVC syllables were presented for short-term serial recall and for short-term recognition. Nineteen adults who stutter and 30 nonstutterers participated in the experiment. In the serial reproduction task the subjects who stuttered reproduced significantly fewer items correctly than did nonstutterers. Recognition performance was measured by nonparametric measures of sensitivity and bias as defined in signal detection theory. The stuttering subjects had a significantly lower sensitivity resulting primarily from a higher false alarm rate. Rate of overt articulation was significantly related to one measure of short-term recall but not to the sensitivity of recognition. These results were interpreted as suggesting that people who stutter have slower phonological encoding and rehearsal times, that they make less use of nonphonological forms of coding than do nonstutterers, and that within their phonological system, activation more easily spills over to similar items.

Nonword repetition skills in young children who do and do not stutter

“…This supposition is consistent with the findings and interpretation of Bosshardt (1993) with AWS. As previously mentioned, adults who participated in the Bosshardt study were asked, among other things, to read sets of four CVC syllables and, following an intervening task, reproduce the syllables in writing.…”

“…In one such study, adults who stutter (AWS) and their fluent controls were asked to reproduce, in writing, sets of four CVC syllables following their presentation and an intervening task (Bosshardt, 1993). Findings revealed that AWS reproduced significantly fewer syllables in the correct position than their fluent counterparts.…”

Effects of word frequency and phonological neighborhood characteristics on confrontation naming in children who stutter and normally fluent peers

“…For example, AWS have also shown slower RTs on tasks requiring monitoring of phonological structure (such as judging whether stimuli rhyme) and lexical analysis (making semantic category judgments; Bosshardt, 1993Bosshardt, , 1994Weber-Fox, Spruill, Spencer, & Smith, 2008), as well as while monitoring for particular phonemes (Sasisekaran, De Nil, Smyth, & Johnson, 2006). Some of these effects are exacerbated under conditions of increased cognitive load (Weber-Fox et al, 2004) Weber-Fox and colleagues noted that the data to date are "consistent with the hypothesis that underlying neural processes mediating lexical access may operate atypically in adults who stutter in the absence of overt speech" (Weber-Fox et al, 2004, p. 1246.…”

Speech Production in People Who Stutter: Testing the Motor Plan Assembly Hypothesis

“…Or, it is also possible that the group difference in picture naming relates to processes that are involved in the building (and SO) of dependent variables (7) for persons who stutter and control speakers, univariate F-values (F) for group effect, including t\2, w2, the confidence intervals (Cl), and the percentage of subjects misclassified (PM) values, as well as step- and retrieval of the associations between the pictures and their verbal labels. Such a suggestion was made by Bosshardt (1993), who found impaired recall and recognition performance for persons who stutter in comparison with matched control speakers. In sum, the task effect on group differences in reaction time found in the present study may indicate subtle differences between persons who stutter and control speakers in higher order (linguistic or memory) processing of verbal stimuli (see also Rastatter & Dell, 1987).…”