Title: Implications of the Concepts Underlying Task-dynamic Modeling on Kinematic Studies of Stuttering*
Abstract: The assigned task is to demonstrate how the concepts underlying task-dynamic modeling can improve our understanding of speech motor organization in those who stutter. The discussion focuses on the principles underlying, and the results of experiments that have centered upon, certain organizational principles of skill motor behavior. Based on the results of experiments of this type, the following assumptions are drawn: (1) the stutterers' speech motor system exhibits generalized spatio-temporal dysfunction and (2) the dysfunction occurs at a level of motor control that is generally responsible for spatio temporal organization of all skilled motor activities. This implies that the disorder of stuttering is associated with, in addition to the linguistic factors that are encoded in speech movements and the behavioral influences which might mediate them, irregularities at a rudimentary and pre-linguistic level of motor control. An example of how these assumptions can be tested by task-dynamic modeling is given. This paper will discuss how the concepts underlying task-dynamic modeling can help us understand better speech motor control in those who stutter. To this end, I discuss the results of a select body of research that explores the motor or ganization of speech by stutterers, and conclude that the research suggests that perceptually fluent speech gestures produced by stutterers do not follow certain general principles of motor organization in human behavior. The discussion will be limited to stutterers' speech that is perceived to be fluent, partly because of time constraints, but more importantly because it is not clear whether stutterers' speech movements during their perceptually fluent speech, and by inference their control of the speech mechanism, are different, in some way, from nonstutterers. Preparation of this paper supported in part by NIH Grant DC-00121 and BRS Grant RR-05596 awarded to Haskins Laboratories. Final version ofthis paper was completed during the author's tenure as Fulbright Research Scholar, The University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Grateful acknowledgment is extended to Dr. Wouter Hulstijn for bis careful and constroctive review of the final dra1 ofthis paper.
Publication Year: 1991
Publication Date: 1991-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 25
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