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From: Greg Snyder
Date: 18 Oct 2006
Time: 08:39:15 -0500
Remote Name: 207.68.248.51
Hi Sandy. Researchers have bantered your idea (stuttering resulting from errors in feedback and motor programming) for years. And there certainly are reasons why this perspective is tempting. It did lead to a few rabbit-trails though… For example, people assumed that since DAF enhanced fluency, and that stuttering may result from errors in (auditory) speech feedback and motor programming--ipso facto, stuttering must be an auditory speech feedback disorder. That idea seemed to make sense until 2000, when it was discovered that visual feedback enhanced fluency just as well as the auditory modality. So while I certainly can’t discount the notion that errors between speech feedback (regardless of the modality) and motor programming seem to result in the stuttering phenomenon, I’m not entirely sold on the idea. (An association does not necessitate causality.) Further--as a field, we’ve focused on the motor aspects of stuttering for decades, and haven’t really gotten very far. Some researchers are beginning to believe that the motor aspects of stuttering are distal or peripheral symptoms, and not the pathology itself. (So it’s tantamount to focusing on someone’s fever, when it’s the infection that’s the problem.) … … … As such, I tend to think that the core pathology resulting in the stuttering phenomenon is further upstream from motor involvement. … … … … And of interest, there is a researcher at Gallaudet that has used delayed visual feedback with native signers, and measured the effects of DVF on (fluent) signers. So this type of research is coming… :)