Inducement of fluent speech in persons who stutter via visual choral speech

A novel phenomenon of fluency enhancement via visual gestures of speech in the absence of traditional auditory feedback is reported herein. The effect on visual choral speech on stuttering frequency was investigated. Ten part icipants who stuttered recited memorized text aloud under two conditions. I n a visual choral speech (VCS) condition participants were instructed to fo cus their gaze on the face, lips and jaw of a research assistant who 'silen tly mouthed' the text in unison. In a control condition, participants recit ed memorized text to the research assistant who sat motionless. A statistic ally significant (P = 0.0025) reduction of approximately 80% in stuttering frequency was observed in the VCS condition. As visual linguistic cues are sufficient to activate the auditory cortex, one may speculate that VCS indu ces fluency in a similar yet undetermined manner as altered auditory feedba ck does. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.