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Shadowed and simple reaction times in stutterers and nonstutterers.

Stutterers may experience difficulties in preparing and executing responses. This study investigated these possibilities as well as the possibility that stutterers may experience difficulty in the selection of responses. Two reaction-time tasks were investigated: a shadowing response in which speakers exactly repeated vowel sequences they heard, and a simple response in which speakers said [u] regardless of the identity of the vowel stimulus. Two groups of six adult male subjects, stutterers and nonstutterers, participated. Stimuli consisted of vowel-vowel "syllables" whose initial duration (response foreperiod) was randomly varied from 500 to 1500 ms. Electromyographic (EMG) and acoustic measures were obtained for each response condition. The EMG response latencies, acoustic response latencies, and execution times (EMG latency less the acoustic response latency) were examined for the fluent responses. Results indicated stutterers were, on average, 34 ms slower on acoustic responses than nonstutterers regardless of the task or foreperiod. However, stutterers' and nonstutterers' EMG latencies were not significantly different. Further analysis indicated that the overall slower acoustic responses of stutterers were accounted for almost entirely by longer execution times. Stutterers' difficulties thus appear to lie after response initiation suggesting they have problems in coordination of gestures during execution of fluent responses.