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Biomedical subjects

Roger J Ingham

Publications and source records attributed to Roger J Ingham.

14 recordsLinked to original sources

Stuttering treatment research 1970-2005: I. Systematic review incorporating trial quality assessment of behavioral, cognitive, and related approaches.

PURPOSE: To complete a systematic review, with trial quality assessment, of published research about behavioral, cognitive, and related treatments for developmental stuttering. Goals included the identification of treatment recommendations and research needs based on the available high-quality evidence about stuttering treatment for preschoolers, school-age children, adolescents, and adults. METHOD: Multiple readers reviewed 162 articles published between 1970 and 2005, using a written data extraction instrument developed as a synthesis of existing standards and recommendations. Articles were then assessed using 5 methodological criteria and 4 outcomes criteria, also developed from previously published recommendations. RESULTS: Analyses found 39 articles that met at least 4 of the 5 methodological criteria and were considered to have met a trial quality inclusion criterion for the purposes of this review. Analysis of those articles identified a range of stuttering treatments that met speech-related and/or social, emotional, or cognitive outcomes criteria. CONCLUSIONS: Review of studies that met the trial quality inclusion criterion established for this review suggested that response-contingent principles are the predominant feature of the most powerful treatment procedures for young children who stutter. The most powerful treatments for adults, with respect to both speech outcomes and social, emotional, or cognitive outcomes, appear to combine variants of prolonged speech, self-management, response contingencies, and other infrastructural variables. Other specific clinical recommendations for each age group are provided, as are suggestions for future research.

Acupuncture↗

Stuttering treatment research 1970-2005: II. Systematic review incorporating trial quality assessment of pharmacological approaches.

PURPOSE: To complete a systematic review, incorporating trial quality assessment, of published research about pharmacological treatments for stuttering. Goals included the identification of treatment recommendations and research needs based on the available high-quality evidence. METHOD: Multiple readers reviewed 31 articles published between 1970 and 2005, using a written data extraction instrument developed as a synthesis of existing standards and recommendations. Articles were then assessed using 5 methodological criteria and 4 outcomes criteria, also developed from previously published recommendations. RESULTS: None of the 31 articles met more than 3 of the 5 methodological criteria (M = 1.74). Four articles provided data to support a claim of short-term improvement in social, emotional, or cognitive variables. One article provided data to show that stuttering frequency was reduced to less than 5%, and 4 additional articles provided data to show that stuttering may have been reduced by at least half. Among the articles that met the trial quality inclusion criterion for the second stage of this review, none provided uncomplicated positive reports. CONCLUSIONS: None of the pharmacological agents tested for stuttering have been shown in methodologically sound reports to improve stuttering frequency to below 5%, to reduce stuttering by at least half, or to improve relevant social, emotional, or cognitive variables. These findings raise questions about the logic supporting the continued use of current pharmacological agents for stuttering.

Anticonvulsants↗

The distribution of phonated intervals in the speech of individuals who stutter.

PURPOSE: Previous research has demonstrated the fluency-improving effect of reducing the occurrence of short-duration, phonated intervals (PIs; approximately 30-150 ms) in individuals who stutter, prompting the hypothesis that PIs in these individuals' speech are not distributed normally, particularly in the short PI ranges. It has also been hypothesized that this nonnormal PI distribution will be present during the stutter-free speech of affected persons. METHOD: A comparison was made between the distributions of PIs during oral reading by adolescent and adult speakers who stuttered (n=13; 11 males) and by age- and gender-matched, normally fluent control participants. RESULTS: The results did not support these hypotheses. The results showed that although there were significantly fewer PIs in the speech of the speakers who stuttered (probably because of their slower speaking rate), there was no significant difference between the PI distributions of both speaker groups. This was also true for comparisons between the stutter-free speech of the affected speakers and matched periods of speech produced by the control participants. The PI distributions from both groups were highly correlated. CONCLUSION: The null hypothesis findings are discussed in relation to speech-motor- and neurologic-systems explanations for the fluency-inducing effects of reducing short PIs in the speech of individuals who stutter.

Adolescent↗

Speech effort measurement and stuttering: investigating the chorus reading effect.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to investigate chorus reading's (CR's) effect on speech effort during oral reading by adult stuttering speakers and control participants. The effect of a speech effort measurement highlighting strategy was also investigated. METHOD: Twelve persistent stuttering (PS) adults and 12 normally fluent control participants completed 1-min base rate readings (BR-nonchorus) and CRs within a BR/CR/BR/CR/BR experimental design. Participants self-rated speech effort using a 9-point scale after each reading trial. Stuttering frequency, speech rate, and speech naturalness measures were also obtained. Instructions highlighting speech effort ratings during BR and CR phases were introduced after the first CR. RESULTS: CR improved speech effort ratings for the PS group, but the control group showed a reverse trend. Both groups' effort ratings were not significantly different during CR phases but were significantly poorer than the control group's effort ratings during BR phases. The highlighting strategy did not significantly change effort ratings. CONCLUSION: The findings show that CR will produce not only stutter-free and natural sounding speech but also reliable reductions in speech effort. However, these reductions do not reach effort levels equivalent to those achieved by normally fluent speakers, thereby conditioning its use as a gold standard of achievable normal fluency by PS speakers.

Adult↗

"Roadblocks" revisited: neural change, stuttering treatment, and recovery from stuttering.

UNLABELLED: In light of emerging findings concerning untreated recovery and neural plasticity, this paper re-examines the viability of an NIH conference recommendation [Cooper, J. A. (1990). Research directions in stuttering: Consensus and conflict. In Cooper, J. A. (Ed.), Research needs in stuttering: Roadblocks and future directions (pp. 98-100). Rockville, MD: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.] that adults who have recovered from stuttering might inform our understanding of the nature and treatment of persistent stuttering. It is suggested that those who have recovered could constitute a behavioral, cognitive, and neurophysiologic benchmark for evaluating stuttering treatment for adolescents and adults, while helping to identify the limits of recovery from a persistent disorder. This possibility seems especially promising because of findings from recent studies investigating untreated recovery during childhood and adulthood, the emerging evidence concerning neural plasticity and reorganization, and reports of neural system changes during stuttering treatment. Potential obstacles to applying findings from unassisted recovery to treatment do exist, but the benefits of attempts to fully understand stuttering certainly outweigh the difficulties. EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES: After completing this activity, the learner will be able to: (1) describe two complexities involved in determining whether recovery from stuttering was assisted or unassisted; (2) discuss the implications for stuttering research of two neural plasticity research findings from areas other than stuttering; and (3) evaluate the possible implications for stuttering treatment of a coordinated research program that addresses behavioral, cognitive, and neurological characteristics of assisted and unassisted recovery from stuttering.

Adolescent↗

Stuttered and fluent speech production: an ALE meta-analysis of functional neuroimaging studies.

This study reports an activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis of imaging studies of chronic developmental stuttering in adults. Two parallel meta-analyses were carried out: (1) stuttered production in the stutterers; (2) fluent production in the control subjects. The control subjects' data replicated previous analyses of single-word reading, identifying activation in primary motor cortex, premotor cortex, supplementary motor area, Rolandic operculum, lateral cerebellum, and auditory areas, among others. The stuttering subjects' analysis showed that similar brain areas are involved in stuttered speech as in fluent speech, but with some important differences. Motor areas were over-activated in stuttering, including primary motor cortex, supplementary motor area, cingulate motor area, and cerebellar vermis. Frontal operculum, Rolandic operculum, and anterior insula showed anomalous right-laterality in stutterers. Auditory activations, due to hearing one's own speech, were essentially undetectable in stutterers. The phenomenon of efference copy is proposed as a unifying account of the pattern activation revealed within this ALE meta-analysis. This provides the basis for a stuttering system model that is testable and should help to advance the understanding and treatment of this disorder.

Brain↗

Have disfluency-type measures contributed to the understanding and treatment of developmental stuttering?

PURPOSE: This article critically reviews evidence to determine whether the use of disfluency typologies, such as syllable repetitions or prolongations, has assisted the understanding or treatment of developmental stuttering. Consideration is given to whether there is a need for a fundamental shift in the basis for constructing measures of stuttering behavior. METHOD: The history of using specific types of disfluencies to assess stuttering, including more recent developments such as counts of stuttering-like disfluencies, is reviewed. The focus is on studies that have investigated the validity and reliability of these perceptually based assessment methods. CONCLUSION: The evidence from use of disfluency-type measures shows that the behavioral difference between stuttering and normally fluent speakers is solely related to the amount of observable stuttering; the differences are only partially realized within disfluency-type measures. Indeed, because disfluency-type measures show poor reliability and conflate stuttered and nonstuttered speech, they have only limited heuristic value for research and provide no obvious benefits for clinicians. At best, they should be regarded as imprecise descriptors of observable stuttering and not a fundamental measure of stuttering. A recommended solution to the problematic history of verbal-based definitions of stuttering behavior is continued development and investigation of exemplar-based definition and measurement.

Articulation Disorders↗

Brain correlates of stuttering and syllable production: gender comparison and replication.

This article reports a gender replication study of the P. T. Fox et al. (2000) performance correlation analysis of neural systems that distinguish between normal and stuttered speech in adult males. Positron-emission tomographic (PET) images of cerebral blood flow (CBF) were correlated with speech behavior scores obtained during PET imaging for 10 dextral female stuttering speakers and 10 dextral, age- and sex-matched normally fluent controls. Gender comparisons were made between the total number of voxels per region significantly correlated with speech performance (as in P. T. Fox et al., 2000) plus total voxels per region that were significantly correlated with stutter rate and not with syllable rate. Stutter-rate regional correlates were generally right-sided in males, but bilateral in the females. For both sexes the positive regional correlates for stuttering were in right (R) anterior insula and the negative correlates were in R Brodmann area 21/22 and an area within left (L) inferior frontal gyrus. The female stuttering speakers displayed additional positive correlates in L anterior insula and in basal ganglia (L globus pallidus, R caudate), plus extensive right hemisphere negative correlates in the prefrontal area and the limbic and parietal lobes. The male stuttering speakers were distinguished by positive correlates in L medial occipital lobe and R medial cerebellum. Regions that positively correlated with syllable rate (essentially stutter-free speech) in stuttering speakers and controls were very similar for both sexes. The findings strengthen claims that chronic developmental stuttering is functionally related to abnormal speech-motor and auditory region interactions. The gender differences may be related to differences between the genders with respect to susceptibility (males predominate) and recovery from chronic stuttering (females show higher recovery rates during childhood).

Adult↗

Towards a functional neural systems model of developmental stuttering.

UNLABELLED: This paper overviews recent developments in an ongoing program of brain imaging research on developmental stuttering that is being conducted at the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio. This program has primarily used H(2)15O PET imaging of different speaking tasks by right-handed adult male and female persistent stutterers, recovered stutterers and controls in order to isolate the neural regions that are functionally associated with stuttered speech. The principal findings have emerged from studies using condition contrasts and performance correlation techniques. The emerging findings from these studies are reviewed and referenced to a neural model of normal speech production recently proposed by Jürgens [Neurosci. Biobehav. Rev. 26 (2002) 235]. This paper will report (1) the reconfiguration of previous findings within the Jürgens Model; (2) preliminary findings of an investigation with late recovered stutterers; (3) an investigation of neural activations during a treatment procedure designed to produce a sustained improvement in fluency; and (4) an across-studies comparison that seeks to isolate neural regions within the Jürgens Model that are consistently associated with stuttering. Two regions appear to meet this criterion: right anterior insula (activated) and anterior middle and superior temporal gyri (deactivated) mainly in right hemisphere. The implications of these findings and the direction of future imaging investigations are discussed. EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES: The reader will learn about (1) recent uses of H(2)15O PET imaging in stuttering research; (2) the use of a new neurological model of speech production in imaging research on stuttering; and (3) initial findings from PET imaging investigations of treated and recovered stutterers.

Adolescent↗