STUTTERING, LANGUAGE, AND COGNITION - A REVIEW AND A MODEL OF STUTTERING AS SUPRASEGMENTAL SENTENCE PLAN ALIGNMENT (SPA)

Extant models of stuttering do not account for: the emergence of stutt ering at the onset of productive language use; the greater incidence o f stuttering during spontaneous speech, on complex sentences, and at s entence-initial positions; the greater incidence of stuttering in bili nguals' 2nd language; the apparent deficiency of stutterers in express ive and receptive language skills; the prevalence of spontaneous recov ery from stuttering; and the lack of chronic physiological or articula tory deficits in stuttering children's fluent speech. The author prese nts a model of stuttering as points of suprasegmental sentence plan al ignment (SPA). Such alignment processes occur when, due to on-line sen tence production processes, SPAs adopted prior to utterance initiation need to be aligned with revised SPAs. This model parsimoniously accou nts for the findings reviewed in the article.