Spoken language production and childhood stuttering

描述(申请人提供)：这项研究的目的是确定口语产生的中断是否与儿童口吃有关。口吃可能与言语产生的计划阶段过程中的干扰有关，这一概念一直是最近几个口吃理论的焦点。需要检验的主要假设是，口吃儿童在词汇和/或句法处理部分存在困难。词汇或句法规划和提取过程中的困难可能会导致会话过程中频繁的犹豫、重复和延长，可能是为了为进一步的语言处理功能争取时间。这项研究使用新颖的心理语言学方法，直接控制3岁、0岁至5岁、11岁(岁、月)口吃儿童词汇和句法激活的速度。具体地说，在项目1中将使用句法启动范式来考察句法复杂性对儿童图画描述潜伏期的影响，提供关于句法表征方面的信息。在项目2中，重复启动将被用来检验儿童的图片命名潜伏期，提供有关词汇-语音形式提取的信息。最后，在项目3中，孩子们将在不同的句子上下文中命名图片，提供有关词汇概念选择的信息。这些项目的发现将对显著的语言过程在儿童口吃的开始和/或原因中所起的作用提供有意义的见解。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The purpose of this research is to determine whether disruptions in spoken language production are associated with childhood stuttering. The notion that stuttering may be related to disruptions among processes that occur during the planning stages of speech-language production has been the focus of several recent theories of stuttering. The primary hypothesis to be tested is that children who stutter have difficulties with lexical and/or syntactic processing components. Difficulties with lexical or syntactic planning and retrieval processes could result in frequent hesitations, repetitions, and prolongations during conversational speech, perhaps in an attempt to "buy time" for further linguistic processing functions. The proposed research uses novel, psycholinguistic methodology to directly manipulate the speed of lexical and syntactic activation in children who do and do not stutter between the ages of 3;0 to 5;11 (years;months). In specific, the syntactic priming paradigm will be used in Project 1 to examine the effects of syntactic complexity on children's picture description latencies, providing information about aspects of syntactic representation. In Project 2, repetition priming will be used to examine children's picture naming latencies, providing information about lexical-phonological form retrieval. Finally, in Project 3, children will name pictures within various sentential contexts, providing information about lexical conceptual selection. Findings from these projects will provide meaningful insights into the role that salient linguistic processes play in the initiation and/or cause of instances of stuttering in children.