The effects of presenting a click in syllable-initial position on the speech of stutterers: Comparison with a metronome click

Abstract

The speech of ten stutterers, recorded while they were listening to a concurrent metronome click and with a click which was triggered so that it occurred at the beginning of every syllable, was assessed. Speech rate and number of disfluencies were measured in each speaking condition. The results indicated that fewer disfluencies occurred (relative to normal reading performance) when a metronome or syllable-initial click was presented. In a perceptual experiment, a group of normal listeners was presented with samples of each of the stutterers' speech from all three speaking conditions. The listeners were asked to choose that which sounded most natural. The speech recorded from the condition where a click occurred at syllable onset was judged more natural than normal speech or speech recorded while the stutterers heard a metronome click. © 1987.