5527V - Effects of Prosodic Prominence on Articulatory Movement Parameters and Variability in Adults Who Stutter

While linguistic and other (e.g., cognitive, emotional) interactions with the speech motor system are cornerstones of multifactorial views of stuttering (e.g., Smith & Weber, 2017), relatively little attention has been given to prosodic factors. This study investigated how prosodic demands within a communicative task impact speech motor performance in adults who stutter (AWS) in comparison to adults who do not stutter (AWNS). Prosodic structure was manipulated through changes in semantic focus, and prosodic demands were framed in terms of degree of phrasal prominence. Kinematic analyses were conducted to examine how focus-induced changes in prosodic prominence impact articulatory movement parameters (i.e., duration, displacement, and velocity) and variability at the syllable level in AWS compared to AWNS.