Stuttering as a sequencing and timing disorder

The present chapter takes up the~problem of stuttering where Van Riper (1982) left off. Van Riper (p. 45) defined stuttering as a disruption of the simultaneous and successive programming of muscular movements required to produce a speech sound or its link to the next sound in a word. Anticipation of this programming difficulty can then cause struggle and avoidance reactions which are secondary. variable. and learned. However, the primary difficulty lies in the programming of sequence and timing, and Van Riper summarized several sources of evidence for this basic thesis. For example. asynchronies or lags have been observed in all of the speech muscles of stutterers, not only during overt instances of stuttering but also during their seemingly fluent speech (Zimmerman, 1980). The temporal coordination of voice. respiration, and articulation is apparently disrupted during fluent as well as nonfluent utterances of stutterers. Stutterers are also less able to repeat the temporal pattern of a sentence or sequence of finger taps tha