Implicit and explicit motor learning in children and adults who stutter

发育性口吃是一种语言流畅性障碍，通常始于青春期前的儿童。有重要证据表明，言语运动障碍是这种疾病的核心。这些缺陷很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获得新的运动技能方面的能力不足的程度。我们的结果表明，即使经过广泛的练习，这些成年人获得新的语音序列的能力也不如非口吃的人。早期证据表明，口吃成年人和非口吃成年人在技能巩固方面的差异表明，这种缺陷可能反映了运动执行和运动学习过程。重要的是，我们的研究结果还表明，在语音和非语音(手指排序)运动技能方面表现不佳之间存在明显的相似之处，这支持了一种假设，即这些缺陷影响的口吃者不仅限于语音清晰度，还可能反映出一般的运动障碍。

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.