Speech Motor Control in English-Mandarin Bilinguals who stutter

Type of content
Theses / Dissertations
Publisher's DOI/URI
Thesis discipline
Speech and Language Sciences
Degree name
Master of Science
Publisher
University of Canterbury. Department of Communication Disorders
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Language
Date
2013
Authors
Chiam, Ruth
Abstract

Research examining bilinguals who stutter (BWS) is limited; in particular there are few studies that have considered examining features of speech motor control in BWS. The present study was designed to examine features of speech motor control in bilingual speakers of Mandarin and English. Speech motor control was examined through the acoustic analysis of speaking rate, voice onset time (VOT) and stuttering adaptation. Participants ranged from age between 9 and 27 years. Upon completion of a language dominance questionnaire, two BWS participants were found to be English dominant and three were Mandarin dominant. Each BWS participant was matched to age/sex matched control participants (BWNS). Results for the BWS participants found more stuttering in the less dominant language based on a measure of percentage of syllables stuttered. All of the BWS participants demonstrated stuttering adaptation and there was no significant difference in the amount of adaptation for Mandarin and English. There was no difference found between BWS and BWNS for speaking rate and VOT. In spite of the similarity between BWS and BWNS, speaking rate in Mandarin appeared to be faster compared to English. These findings suggest that speech motor control in BWS and BWNS are similar and current application of these findings to the clinical setting is discussed.

Description
Citation
Keywords
stuttering, stutter, stammer, stammering, bilingual, bilinguals, English, Mandarin, English-Mandarin, Mandarin-English, voice onset time, speech therapy, speech motor control, speaking rate, articulation rate, bilinguals who stutter, VOT, adaptation effect, adaptation, speech and language therapy, language dominance, language proficiency
Ngā upoko tukutuku/Māori subject headings
ANZSRC fields of research
Rights
Copyright Ruth Chiam