Phonological encoding skills in persons who stutter
By: by Jayanthi Sasisekaran.
Published: 2006
Language: eng
Number of pages: 320
ISBN-13: 9780494160466
Description: Psycholinguistic theories of stuttering attribute a crucial role to a phonological encoding deficit, although controversy exists regarding the precise nature and extent of this deficit. Two experiments discussed in the present thesis tested phonological encoding skills in persons who stutter (PWS).In Experiment 1, 10 PWS and 11 persons who do not stutter (PNS) were tested in a phoneme-monitoring task performed during silent picture naming. Performance in this task was compared to a tone monitoring task, a picture naming task, and a simple motor task. PWS were significantly slower in phoneme monitoring as compared to PNS. No significant group differences were present for response speed in the auditory monitoring, picture naming and simple motor tasks, nor did the two groups differ for percent errors in any of the experimental tasks.In Experiment 2, 10 PWS and 12 PNS were tested further in the phoneme monitoring task. The phonological complexity of the target items was varied such that participants monitored either compound words or noun phrases. Performance in this task was compared to phoneme monitoring in aurally presented target words to investigate whether any differences observed in silent naming were also evident in perception. Furthermore, group performance in rhyme monitoring was investigated. Analysis of the phoneme monitoring data from silent naming indicated significant group differences in monitoring the phonologically complex noun phrases as compared to compound words; significant differences were not obtained in perception. The PWS were also significantly slower than the PNS in rhyme monitoring for both silent naming and perception.The theoretically driven approach in the present thesis offered support for a delay in phonological encoding during phoneme monitoring in PWS. In the absence of group differences in the percentage of errors in monitoring, the phonological encoding deficit is attributed to mechanism-specific as opposed to strategy-based differences. Such differences, evident in both segmental and rhyme encoding, carry implications for the timely conversion of the phonological to the phonetic code for speech execution. The findings are discussed within the context of existing psycholinguistic theories of stuttering and phonological encoding.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-07, Section: B, page: 3756.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Toronto, 2006.

Includes bibliographic references.

Electronic version licensed for access by U. of T. users.