A comparative study of speech motor programming in stutterers and nonstutterers

The present study was undertaken to verify the credibility of theories that attribute the locus of stuttering aetiology to be a central speech planning dysfunction. Ten stutterers and ten nonstutterers participated in this study which utilized a choice reaction time paradigm to determine the effects of three independent variables, viz., word length, phonetic complexity, and linguistic complexity on dependent variable‐speech reaction time (SRT). By varying the response complexity in this manner it was intended to manipulate the response preparation in a way that if stuttering depends on a premotor programming, then the response complexity would adversely affect response preparation time and this effect of ‘‘complexity’’ would be greater for stutterers (with aberrant speech programming) than for nonstutterers. The results obtained supported the above and significant differences were elicited in both within and across group conditions. However, some peculiar ‘‘effects,’’ viz., ‘‘paradoxical complexity effect...