Implicit and explicit motor learning in children and adults who stutter

发展性口吃是一种语言流畅障碍，通常发生在青春期前的儿童身上。有重要的证据表明，言语运动缺陷是这种疾病的核心。这些缺陷在本质上可能是遗传的和神经的，被认为是我们理解口吃的发生、发展和恢复的基础。在我们之前的研究中，我们调查了口吃的成年人在多大程度上缺乏获得新运动技能的能力。我们的研究结果表明，即使经过大量的练习，这些成年人在掌握新的语言序列方面也不如非口吃者熟练。早期证据表明，在口吃和非口吃的成年人之间，技能巩固的差异表明，这种缺陷可能反映了运动执行和运动学习过程。重要的是，我们的结果也显示了言语和非言语（手指排序）运动技能缺陷之间的明显相似之处，支持了这些缺陷影响口吃者的假设，即这些缺陷不仅限于言语表达，而且可能反映了一般的运动缺陷。

Developmental stuttering is a speech fluency disorder, which typically has its onset in pre-pubescent children. There is significant evidence that speech motor deficits are at the core of the disorder. These deficits, which likely are genetic and neural in nature, are considered fundamental to our understanding of the onset, development and recovery from stuttering. In our previous research, we have investigated the extent to which adults who stutter are deficient in their ability to acquire novel motor skills. Our results have demonstrated that these adults are less proficient than nonstuttering speakers acquiring new speech sequences, even after extensive practice. Early evidence of differences in skill consolidation between the stuttering and nonstuttering adults has suggested that this deficit may reflect both motor execution and motor learning processes. Importantly, our results also have shown clear parallels between deficient performance in both speech and non-speech (finger sequencing) motor skills, supporting the hypothesis that these deficiencies affecting people who stutter are not limited to speech articulation but may reflect a general motor deficit.