Abnormal Sensorimotor Integration in Adults Who Stutter: A Behavioral Study by Adaptation of Delayed Auditory Feedback

Stuttering is a fluency disorder, partially alleviated during altered auditory feedback, suggesting abnormal sensorimotor integration in adults who stutter (AWS). As weighting of multiple integrating-information sources would be decided based on their reliabilities, the use of external (auditory feedback) and internal information (prediction of sensory consequences) could correlate with speech processing. We hypothesized that abnormal auditory-feedback processing in AWS could be related to decrease in internal processing precision. We used a perceptual-adaptation experiment of delayed auditory feedback (DAF) to verify the hypothesis. Seventeen AWS and 17 adults who do not stutter (ANS) were required to say “ah” and judge the simultaneity between their motor sensations and vocal sounds in each stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) (0, 25, 50, 75, 100, 125, or 150 ms) after inducing adaptation of DAF (three conditions with 0-, 66-, or 133-ms delay). While no adaptation occurred during the 0 ms condition, perceptual change in simultaneity judgment (adaptation effect) occurred during the 66 and 133 ms conditions. The simultaneity judgments following exposure in each SOA were fitted to the psychometric function in each condition for the AWS and ANS groups. We calculated the μ (signifying the point of subjective simultaneity and adaptation-effect degree) and σ (signifying the detecting precision) of each function and analyzed them by parametric analyses. For the μ, participant groups and adaptation conditions showed a significant interaction; the adaptation effect was greater in the AWS than in the ANS group. Additionally, the μ and σ were only positively correlated in the AWS group. The point of subjective simultaneity for auditory delay by inducing DAF was higher in AWS than in ANS, indicating that perception of simultaneity in AWS was influenced by DAF to a greater extent. Moreover, the significant positive correlation between the μ and σ in AWS showed that the more imprecise the internal auditory processing, the more AWS relied on auditory feedback. It is suggested that the reliability of internal information differed within the AWS group, and AWS with reduced internal reliability appeared to compensate by relying to a great extent on auditory feedback information.