Goal 2: To investigate nature of stuttering from onset through development

The DSL has two cutting edge experimental priming stations as well as two advanced transcription stations. These stations are used to further investigate a current working hypothesis related to linguistic processing.

Graduate student conducting priming experiment

Working hypothesis

Linguistic processing forms a crucial underlying aspect of encoding speech output. Rapid mapping of the syntactic/meaning aspects of a word (i.e., lemma) onto the phonological form of a word (i.e., lexeme) (Levelt, 1989) is fundamental to the phonological encoding process. Byrd, Conture, and Ohde (2007) recently suggested a linguistic processing etiological account for developmental stuttering. In this perspective, developmental stuttering may be related to an inability to complete the process of phonological encoding within a timeframe that is commensurate with the rate of activation. According to this hypothesis, the mismatch between completion of the phonological spell-out and activation of the motor program results in an underspecified motor plan being executed. As a result, the person who stutters essentially repeats the underspecified plan until the complete plan is accessed and/or the incomplete plan is abandoned. Priming studies as well as descriptive speech analysis studies are being conducted in the DSL to further investigate this hypothesis.