PHYSIOLOGICAL CORRELATES OF STUTTERING

口吃是一种语言障碍，其患病率估计占世界人口的1%。这通常是个人的重大沟通问题，限制了教育和就业机会以及社会和心理适应。口吃的病因是未知的，治疗策略和结果是高度可变的。理解口吃的病因和发展成功的治疗技术的一个主要障碍是缺乏对这种障碍的生理基础的理解。口吃表现为言语运动过程的中断。已知影响口吃发生的复杂因素，包括社会心理、认知和语言变量，最终必然对言语产生所必需的生理事件产生影响。因此，了解言语运动过程中断的生理机制是理解口吃的必要条件。本应用程序中提出的实验通过采用一种新的方法来解决语言加工在口吃中的作用，该方法侧重于感知和语言刺激产生的神经生理学。大脑对语言刺激的平均电反应将用于探索口吃儿童和成人的语言处理能力。这些实验将确定口吃的人是否有非典型的语言神经子系统，即使他们只听单词而不说。在另一组实验中，同样的参与者将产生旨在挑战语言规划和语言生产过程的话语。这些实验的结果将为理解影响儿童和成人口吃的多种因素提供重大进展。

Stuttering is a disorder of speech with a prevalence estimated to be 1% of the world's population. It is often a significant communicative problem for the individual, limiting educational and employment opportunities and social and psychological adjustment. The etiology of stuttering is unknown, and treatment strategies and outcomes are highly variable. A major impediment to understanding the etiology of stuttering and to the development of successful therapeutic techniques is the lack of understanding of the physiological bases of the disorder. Stuttering manifests itself as a breakdown in speech motor processes. The complex factors known to affect the occurrence of stuttering, including psychosocial, cognitive, and linguistic variables, must ultimately have an effect on the physiological events necessary for the production of speech. Therefore, to understand stuttering it is essential to understand the physiological mechanisms underlying disruptions of speech motor processes in stuttering. The experiments proposed in this application addresses the role of linguistic processing in stuttering by taking a new approach, one that focuses on the neurophysiology of the perception and the production of linguistic stimuli. Averaged electrical responses of the brain to linguistic stimuli will be used to explore the linguistic processing abilities of children and adults who stutter. These experiments will determine if people who stutter have atypical neural subsystems for language even when they are only listening to words and not producing them. In another set of experiments the same participants will produce utterances that are designed to challenge linguistic planning and production processes for speech. The results of these experiments will provide major progress toward understanding the multiple factors that influence stuttering in children and adults.