Subvocalization and Reading Rate Differences between Stuttering and Nonstuttering Children and Adults

The hypothesis tested was that stutterers subvocalize more slowly than nonstutterers and that they need more time for the overt production of the fluent parts of their speech. We also investigated whether rate differences could only be observed for those words on which the stutterers expect to stutter. Fifty-nine school children (27 stutterers and 32 nonstutterers) and 19 adults (18 stutterers and 21 nonstutterers) performed a reading task in which a noun was presented together with its definite article. The presentation times of the reading material were controlled by the subjects. Half of the material had to be read silently, the other half orally. In oral reading, only the data from those trials without any indication of disfluencies were used. Dependent variables were presentation times, speech latency, and speech duration. The stutterers’ silent presentation times were significantly longer than those of nonstutterers and this difference was significantly greater for children than for adults. In oral ...