Phonological processing was examined in school-age children who stutter (CWS) by assessing their performance and recording event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in a visual rhyming task. CWS had lower accuracy on rhyming judgments, but the cognitive processes that mediate the comparisons of the phonological representations of words, as indexed by the rhyming effect (RE) ERP, were similar for the stuttering and normally fluent groups. Thus the lower behavioral accuracy of rhyming judgments by the CWS could not be attributed to that particular stage of processing. Instead, the neural functions for processes preceding the RE, indexed by the N400 and CNV elicited by the primes and the N400 elicited by the targets, suggest atypical processing that may have resulted in less efficient, less accurate rhyming judgment for the CWS. Based on the present results, it seems likely that the neural processes related to phonological rehearsal and target word anticipation, as indexed by the CNV, are distinctive for CWS at this age. Further, it is likely that the relative contributions of the left and right hemispheres differ in CWS in the stage of processing when linguistic integration occurs, as indexed by the N400. Taken together, these results suggest that CWS may be less able to form and retain a stable neural representation of the prime onset and rime as they anticipate the target presentation, which may lead to lower rhyming judgment accuracy.

Purpose-The present study examines the effect of normal aging on respiratory support for speech when utterance length is controlled.Methods-Fifteen women (mean age 71 years) and 10 men (mean age 73 years) produced two sentences of different lengths in four loudness conditions while respiratory kinematics were measured. Measures included those related to lung volume and chest wall movements.Results-Data from the older adults were compared to data from 30 young adults, previously published. A significant age by sex effect was demonstrated. Older men produced speech at higher lung volumes than younger men. No significant differences existed between older and younger women. Older adults tended to use more abdominal movement in loud speech than younger adults, especially when talking in noise. Some of the mechanisms used by the older adults to support increased loudness in response to the cues differed from those used by the younger adults. Agerelated differences were larger when participants produced the longer utterance as compared to the shorter one.Conclusions-Reduced chest wall compliance, pulmonary elastic recoil, and laryngeal closure may explain the findings. These data can be used to help distinguish normal age-related changes from disease-related changes.

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs), judgment accuracy, and reaction times (RTs) were obtained for 11 adults who stutter and 11 normally fluent speakers as they performed a rhyme judgment task of visually presented word pairs. Half of the word pairs (i.e., prime and target) were phonologically and orthographically congruent across words. That is, the words looked orthographically similar and rhymed (e.g., thrown, own) or did not look similar and did not rhyme (e.g., cake, own). The phonologic and orthographic information across the remaining pairs was incongruent. That is, the words looked similar but did not rhyme (e.g., gown, own) or did not look similar but rhymed (e.g., cone, own). Adults who stutter and those who are normally fluent exhibited similar phonologic processing as indexed by ERPs, response accuracy, and RTs. However, longer RTs for adults who stutter indicated their greater sensitivity to the increased cognitive loads imposed by phonologic/orthographic incongruency. Also, unlike the normally fluent speakers, the adults who stutter exhibited a right hemisphere asymmetry in the rhyme judgment task, as indexed by the peak amplitude of the rhyming effect (difference wave) component. Overall, these findings do not support theories of the etiology of stuttering that posit a core phonologic-processing deficit. Rather we provide evidence that adults who stutter are more vulnerable to increased cognitive loads and display greater right hemisphere involvement in late cognitive processes.

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