Effects of different attention tasks on concurrent speech in adults who stutter and fluent controls

Speech fluency in bilinguals who stutter: Language proficiency and attentional demands as mediating factors

“…Indeed, the mean percentage of stuttering in L2 under divided attention was still higher than the mean percentage of stuttering under full attention In L1. This proposition is furthermore corroborated by the outcome of studies that did employ a more demanding secondary task, such as a spatial working memory task (Eichorn et al, 2016;2019) or a dot-pattern tracking task (Arends et al, 1988).…”

“…Whereas some studies demonstrate a decrease in stuttering frequency (e.g. Arends, Povel, & Kolk, 1988;Eichorn, Marton, Schwartz, Melara, & Pirutinsky, 2016;Eichorn, Pirutinsky, & Marton, 2019;Vasiç & Wijnen, 2005), others have found an increase (e.g. Bosshardt, 2002;Caruso, Chodzko-Zajko, Bidinger, & Sommers, 1994).…”

Disfluencies and Strategies Used by People Who Stutter During a Working Memory Task

“…Various experimental paradigms have been used to measure WM abilities of PWS, such as rhyme judgment, letter recall, and phoneme monitoring (Bosshardt et al, 2002;Jones et al, 2012;Sasisekaran & Basu, 2017). In particular, nonword repetition task and dual task have been repeatedly employed in previous studies (Anderson & Wagovich, 2010;Anderson et al, 2006;Arends et al, 1988;Bosshardt, 1993Bosshardt, , 1999Bosshardt, , 2002Bosshardt et al, 2002;Byrd et al, 2015Byrd et al, , 2012Eichorn et al, 2016Eichorn et al, , 2019Hakim & Bernstein Ratner, 2004;Kamhi & McOsker, 1982;Metten et al, 2011;Sasisekaran, 2013;Vasić & Wijnen, 2005).…”

“…Regarding the fluency performance, a reduction of disfluencies during dual-task conditions is reported (Arends et al, 1988;Bosshardt, 1999;Eichorn et al, 2016;Vasić & Wijnen, 2005), even with no significant group differences in the secondary-task performance between PWS and people who do not stutter (PWNS) in some of the dual-task paradigms (Bosshardt, 1999;Bosshardt et al, 2002;Eichorn et al, 2016Eichorn et al, , 2019. In these studies, while the primary task (speech) is in the verbal domain, the secondary tasks are in a different domain, such as spatial and mental arithmetic tasks.…”

“…Focusing on the evasion of stuttering then often makes them engage in maladaptive coping behaviors or strategies, such as word substitution, pausing, silent rehearsals, and other safety behaviors, to avoid difficult syllables/words (Lowe et al, 2017;Vanryckeghem et al, 2004). Those proactive responses, efforts thereof, and attentional fixation on the conscious motor control of speech organs may rather hinder fluent (effective) communication in spite of the speaker's intent otherwise, as postulated by the constrained action hypothesis and the OPTIMAL (optimizing performance through intrinsic motivation and attention for learning) theory of motor learning (Eichorn et al, 2016(Eichorn et al, , 2019Freedman et al, 2007;Wulf & Lewthwaite, 2010.…”