Self-monitoring of Speech Production in Individuals Who Stutter

Self-monitoring plays a critical role in the acquisition and refining of all skilled movements, including speech production. In current theoretical models of the neural control of movement, self-monitoring depends on the acquisition and updating of internal representations of the motor-to-sensory transformations that take place from the generation of motor commands to final movement outcomes (e.g., articulatory movements and speech sound output). During movement planning and execution, these representations are used to predict sensory consequences ahead of time, and actual and predicted feedback can then be compared. For speech, auditory-motor learning (the process through which neural representations are learned and maintained) and auditory-motor integration in general (including bidirectional interactions during the online control of speech) are believed to play an important role in persistent developmental stuttering. This presentation will give a brief overview of recent insights into potentially critical differences between children and adults who stutter vs. individuals with typical speech in terms of: (a) auditory-motor learning in the presence of experimentally perturbed auditory feedback; (b) feedback-driven corrections of ongoing unperturbed speech movements; and (c) the relationship between such learning-based or instantaneous articulatory adjustments and a central modulation of auditory processing that already starts during movement planning prior to speech onset.