Song and speech prosody influences VOT in stuttering and non-stuttering adolescents

International audienceSince a long time, it is known that singing helps persons who stutter to produce their utterances more fluently. The prosodic characteristics of spoken and sung utterances differ considerably in their rhythmic and tonal structure. Therefore, it has been proposed that song prosody helps stutterers to improve their rhythmic planning of verbal material [1]. In order to investigate this idea, we examined temporal aspects, namely Voice Onset Time (henceforth, VOT) of voiceless plosives, in sung and spoken utterances of young German stutterers and non-stuttering controls. VOT tends to be reduced in song compared to speech. We expected a more important reduction in the stuttering group as voice onset timing should be facilitated in song compared to speech. Seven stuttering adolescents and six normal fluent peers read and sang an altered version of “Happy Birthday” with test words containing the three voiceless stops /p/, /t/, /k/. Results showed that stuttering adolescents differed from the control group by showing no VOT reductions in song. However, additional analyses indicated that group differences disappeared when f0 production in the vowels following the stop consonants were taken into account. These findings suggest that young stutterers differ from controls in their prosodic performance in sung and spoken verbal productions, but further investigations are needed in order to determine which prosodic parameters are most affected