STUTTERING AMELIORATION AT VARIOUS AUDITORY-FEEDBACK DELAYS AND SPEECH RATES

The primary purpose of this study was to determine if the finding of K alinowski et al. (1993) of dramatic reductions in stuttering under del ayed auditory feedback (DAF) at normal and fast speech rates could be replicated. The second purpose was to determine if stuttering frequenc y is differentially affected by various delays in an attempt to identi fy the optimal delay for fluency enhancement for both normal and fast speech rates. Fourteen adult stutterers read eight different passages at either a normal or fast speech rate under non-altered auditory feed back (NAF) and DAF with delays of 25, 50 and 75 ms. Results showed tha t significant fluency enhancement occurred under DAF at both normal an d fast speech rates at all DAF setting (p<0.05). This finding corrobor ates the notion that a slowed rate of speech is not a necessary antece dent for fluency improvement under conditions of altered auditory feed back. In addition, the results indicated that 50 ms appears to be the shortest delay producing the maximum reduction in stuttering frequency .