Purpose: Persistent developmental stuttering is generally considered to be a speech disorder characterized by repetitions, prolongations and postural fixations that is relatively resistant to therapy. While mainstream stuttering therapy continues to rely on behavioral speech targets, research suggests that mirror neuron networks can be activated to temporarily induce natural sounding fluent speech via exposure to second speech signals. As a consequence, the mirror neuron system model of stuttering predicts that initiating gestural primes would be equally effective at enhancing fluency whether they are produced or perceived by the speaker. This study tests this notion by measuring the effects of producing and perceiving an initiating silent oral opening oral gesture on stuttering frequency. Methods: Eight participants of varied overt stuttering severity completed one control and four experimental speaking conditions. Participants read aloud 300-syllable passages for all speaking conditions; four experimental speaking conditions tested the effects of endogenously-produced and exogenously-perceived opening oral gestures. Results: Study data reveal that both the production and perception of initiatory gestural priming significantly enhance fluency. There were no significant differences between the perception and production of the initiating oral opening gestures. Conclusions: Coupled with existing research, these data suggest a primitive response of the action understanding achieved by mirror neuron networks, thereby enabling an individual who stutters to fluently initiate speech via a primitive lower order network, and bypassing the activation higher order linguistic networks where the neural circuitry associated with the etiology stuttering is speculated to occur.
Purpose: Persistent developmental stuttering is generally considered to be a speech disorder characterized by repetitions, prolongations and postural fixations that is relatively resistant to therapy. While mainstream stuttering therapy continues to rely on behavioral speech targets, research suggests that mirror neuron networks can be activated to temporarily induce natural sounding fluent speech via exposure to second speech signals. As a consequence, the mirror neuron system model of stuttering predicts that initiating gestural primes would be equally effective at enhancing fluency whether they are produced or perceived by the speaker. This study tests this notion by measuring the effects of producing and perceiving an initiating silent oral opening oral gesture on stuttering frequency. Methods: Eight participants of varied overt stuttering severity completed one control and four experimental speaking conditions. Participants read aloud 300-syllable passages for all speaking conditions; four experimental speaking conditions tested the effects of endogenously-produced and exogenously-perceived opening oral gestures. Results: Study data reveal that both the production and perception of initiatory gestural priming significantly enhance fluency. There were no significant differences between the perception and production of the initiating oral opening gestures. Conclusions: Coupled with existing research, these data suggest a primitive response of the action understanding achieved by mirror neuron networks, thereby enabling an individual who stutters to fluently initiate speech via a primitive lower order network, and bypassing the activation higher order linguistic networks where the neural circuitry associated with the etiology stuttering is speculated to occur.
INTRODUCTION METHODS RESULTS DISCUSSION
