The comparison of motor sequence skill learning and the automaticity capacities in speech of children who stutter and who do not stutter

In this study, for the purpose of exploring possible relationship between stuttering and, sequence motor skill learning and automaticity; the speech sequence skill learning and automaticity capacities of children with developmental stuttering and children without developmental stuttering were studied. The comparison of the groups of stutterers and non-stutterers on motor performance of speech and determining the effect of masking auditory feedback on group performances were the other purposes of the study.The participants of the study were 24 children (12 children who stutter, and 12 children who do not stutter) between ages 8 and 12. The motor performances of the participants on nonword repetition tasks were tested at three different conditions: single task condition, two tasks condition and masking auditory feedback condition. Word duration was regarded as the indicator of the participants motor performances. On single task condition, in order to evaluate the learning capacities of the groups, the effects of the increasing practice amounts on word duration of the groups were studied. Dual-task procedure was used to investigate groups? automaticity capacities. In the direction of this method, on two task condition, the effects of the cooccurance of nonword repetiton task and a secondary task (responding a auditory stimulus) on nonword repetiton durations were studied. For the masking auditory condition, the effect of impeding the auditory feedback to some level on word durations of the groups was also studied.For nonword repetition task, the results of the study showed no significant difference of skill learning and automaticity between participants who stutter and participants who do not stutter. Additionally, on all conditions participants who stutter showed slow performans, both on nonword repetiton task and responding auditory stimulus task participants as against to participants who do not stutter. On masking auditory feedback task, it was found that impeding auditory feedback did not effect the word durations of the groups.Key Words: stuttering, motor sequence skill, learning, automaticity, auditory feedback