Developmental stuttering is a speech disorder that severely limits one's ability to communicate. White matter anomalies were reported in stuttering, but their functional significance is unclear. We analyzed the relation between white matter properties and speech fluency in adults who stutter (AWS). We used diffusion tensor imaging with tract-based spatial statistics, and examined group differen...

CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN COMMUNICATION SCIENCE AND DISORDERS • Volume 31 • 80–91 • Spring 2004 © NSSLHA 1092-5171/04/3101-0080 ABSTRACT: The many theories of the cause of stuttering are too numerous to mention. Instead, this article presents a brief background of theories in the realms of psychology, learning theory, and biology. A representative sampling of older literature is discussed, followe...

Persistent developmental stuttering (PDS) shares clinical features with task-specific dystonias. In these dystonias, intracortical inhibition is abnormally weak. We therefore sought to determine intracortical inhibition and intracortical facilitation in PDS. In 18 subjects with PDS since childhood (mean age, 39.4 [SD 13.0] years) and 18 speech-fluent controls (43.6 [14.3] years), we investigate...

This article provides a brief introduction to the history and applications of the class of data analytic techniques collectively known as Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Using an example based on psychological factors thought to affect the likelihood of stuttering, we discuss the issues of specification, identification, and model fit and modification in SEM. We also address points relating ...

Background: developmental stuttering is a pathology which begins during childhood, during the phase of language acquisition and development and is characterized as being chronic. Aim: to verify the influence of typology and grammatical classes on the occurrence of speech disruptions of stuttering and fluent children. Method: participants of this study were 80 children, with ages between 4.0 and...

UNLABELLED This paper summarizes and discusses some of the key issues raised in the other four manuscripts in this special edition of Journal of Fluency Disorders. All the four pieces examine risk factors in developmental stuttering from different perspectives and all provide stand-alone contributions to knowledge on the subject. Thus, rather than review, the focus of the present paper is to hi...

Abnormal speech motor preparation is suggested to be a neural characteristic of stuttering. One of the neurophysiological substrates of motor preparation is the contingent negative variation (CNV). The CNV is an event-related, slow negative potential that occurs between two defined stimuli. Unfortunately, CNV tasks are rarely studied in developmental stuttering (DS). Therefore, the present stud...

UNLABELLED This paper reviews recent brain imaging research on stuttering against a background of studies that the writer and colleagues have been conducting at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. The paper begins by reviewing some pertinent background to recent neuroimaging investigations of developmental stuttering. It then outlines the findings from four brain imagi...