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Auditory neural encoding of speech in adults with persistent developmental stuttering

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Abstract

Background

Stuttering is a speech disorder with frequent and protracted prolongations, repetitions, and silent blocks that hamper proper speech production. It develops during the preschool years with a prevalence of 5%, decreasing to 1% in adulthood to be referred to as persistent developmental stuttering. Auditory processing deficit is proposed to be one of the contributing factors to developmental stuttering.

Objective

This study aimed to determine the pattern of auditory processing affection if any in stuttering disorder. This might be helpful for improving management approaches in the future.

Patients and methods

Eleven adults with persistent developmental stuttering and 11 comparative age-matched normally fluent participants were examined with auditory brainstem response (ABR) and mismatch negativity to evaluate the brainstem and cortical processing of speech syllables, respectively.

Results

All participants exhibited normal brainstem processing of nonspeech (click) stimuli, whereas 72.7% of stutterers revealed prolongation of peak latency of all waves of speech-evoked ABR. An additional peak latency delay of mismatch negativity response was found in 81.8% of stutterers.

Conclusion

Auditory processing abnormality is proposed to be the underlying deficit in a subset of stutterers.

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Correspondence to Ola A. Ibraheem MD.

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Ibraheem, O.A., Quriba, A.S. Auditory neural encoding of speech in adults with persistent developmental stuttering. Egypt J Otolaryngol 30, 157–165 (2014). https://doi.org/10.4103/1012-5574.133221

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