Performance of Bimanual Finger Coordination Tasks in Speakers Who Stutter

Stuttering is a neurodevelopmental speech disorder characterized by the symptoms of speech repetition, prolongation, and blocking. Stuttering-related dysfluency can be transiently alleviated by providing an external timing signal such as a metronome or the voice of another person. Therefore, the existence of a core motor timing deficit in stuttering has been speculated. If this is the case, then motoric behaviors other than speech should be disrupted in stuttering. This study examined motoric performance on four complex bimanual tasks in 37 adults who stutter and 31 fluent controls. Two tasks utilized bimanual rotation to examine motor dexterity, and two tasks used the bimanual mirror and parallel tapping movements to examine timing control ability. Video-based analyses were conducted to determine performance accuracy and speed. The results showed that individuals who stutter performed worse than fluent speakers on tapping tasks but not on bimanual rotation tasks. These results suggest stuttering is associated with timing control for general motor behavior.

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Timing and Intensity Variability in the Metronomic Speech of Stuttering and Nonstuttering Speakers

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/jslhr.4302.513 ◽

2000 ◽

Vol 43 (2) ◽

pp. 513-520 ◽

Cited By ~ 23

Author(s):

Frank R. Boutsen ◽

Gene J. Brutten ◽

Christopher R. Watts

Keyword(s):

Speech Rate ◽

Intensity Variation ◽

Timing Control ◽

Adults Who Stutter ◽

Slow Speech ◽

Stress Patterns ◽

Fluent Speakers

The timing and intensity variability of 8 adults who stutter and 8 age-matched fluent speakers was investigated under metronomic conditions. Participants were required to produce double or triple-stress patterns at a slow speech rate (1 syllable/870 ms) when repeating the syllable /stæt/ or /stræt/ nine times. Measures that are sensitive to cyclic rather than overall variation in syllable timing and intensity were employed. Specifically, durational variation between successive syllable onsets as well as intensity variation of the beginning consonant and vowel in successive syllables were computed. Results revealed that, although intensity variation was similar, the timing of successive syllables of persons who stutter was significantly more variable than that of persons who do not stutter. These outcomes are discussed in relation to previous experiments of timing control of persons who stutter and normally fluent persons during metronomic stimulation.

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New Perspectives on the Assessment of Movement Skills and Motor Abilities

Adapted Physical Activity Quarterly ◽

10.1123/apaq.18.4.347 ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 18 (4) ◽

pp. 347-365 ◽

Cited By ~ 38

Author(s):

Allen W. Burton ◽

Richard W. Rodgerson

Keyword(s):

Physical Education ◽

Motor Behavior ◽

Adapted Physical Education ◽

Assessment Instruments ◽

Motor Ability ◽

General Motor ◽

Skill Sets ◽

Motor Abilities ◽

Movement Skills ◽

New Perspective

The practice of adapted physical education should be consistent with a theoretical model of motor behavior. We believe that the dominant view of movement skills, motor abilities, and general motor ability, as expressed in the current literature, often is not congruent with assessment instruments currently used in adapted physical education. The purpose of this paper is to review the dominant conceptualization of skills, abilities, and general motor ability; present four problems with the dominant view related to assessment in adapted physical education; and then offer a new perspective based on a four-level taxonomy. The levels of the proposed taxonomy are movement skills, movement skill sets, movement skill foundations, and general motor ability.

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Aspects of Speech Disorder in Adults who Stutter

The Japan Journal of Logopedics and Phoniatrics ◽

10.5112/jjlp.60.52 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 60 (1) ◽

pp. 52-61

Author(s):

Fumiko Anzaki ◽

Mitsuyo Shibasaki ◽

Sayoko Yamamoto

Keyword(s):

Speech Disorder ◽

Adults Who Stutter

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Reversible block of cerebellar outflow reveals cortical circuitry for motor coordination

10.1101/429043 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Abdulraheem Nashef ◽

Oren Cohen ◽

Ran Harel ◽

Zvi Israel ◽

Yifat Prut

Keyword(s):

Motor Behavior ◽

Cortical Activity ◽

High Frequency Stimulation ◽

Response Patterns ◽

Motor Timing ◽

Related Activity ◽

Spatial Tuning ◽

Preparatory Activity ◽

Frequency Stimulation ◽

Motor Cortical

SUMMARYCoordinated movements are achieved by selecting muscles and activating them at specific times. This process relies on intact cerebellar circuitry, as demonstrated by motor impairments triggered by cerebellar lesions. Based on anatomical connectivity and symptoms observed in cerebellar patients, we hypothesized that cerebellar dysfunction should disrupt the temporal patterns of motor cortical activity but not the selected motor plan. To test this hypothesis, we reversibly blocked cerebellar outflow in primates while monitoring motor behavior and neural activity. This manipulation replicated the impaired motor timing and coordination characteristic of cerebellar ataxia. We found extensive changes in motor cortical activity, including a loss of response transients at movement onset and a decoupling of task-related activity. Nonetheless, the spatial tuning of cells was unaffected and their early preparatory activity was mostly intact. These results indicate that the timing of actions, but not the selection of muscles, is regulated through cerebellar control of motor cortical activity.HIGHLIGHTSHigh frequency stimulation blocked cerebellar outflow and impaired motor behaviorResponse patterns and coordinated firing of CTC neurons were disruptedThe spatial tuning and early preparatory activity of neurons were unaffectedCerebellar control of local and global cortical synchrony supports motor timingIN BRIEFNashef et al. used high frequency stimulation to block cerebellar outflow. This manipulation impaired motor timing and coordination similarly to symptoms found in cerebellar patients. In parallel, the response patterns of cortical neurons and cell-to-cell synchronization were altered, yet spatial tuning was maintained. Motor timing and coordination are regulated by a dedicated cerebellar signal that organizes execution-related activity of a motor cortical subnetwork.

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Automatic Voice-Based Recognition For Automotive Headlights Beam Control

International Journal of Automotive and Mechanical Engineering ◽

10.15282/ijame.18.1.2021.05.0640 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 18 (1) ◽

Author(s):

W. Astuti ◽

S. Tan ◽

M.I. Solihin ◽

R.S. Vincent ◽

B. Michael

Keyword(s):

Neural Networks ◽

Artificial Neural Networks ◽

Recognition System ◽

Support Vector ◽

Recognition Mechanism ◽

Training Time ◽

Performance Accuracy ◽

Vector Machines ◽

Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficient ◽

The Voice

Driving comfort plays an important role in modern automotive technologies. One of the ways of comforting the driver is the voice-based recognition to control car headlights. The driver uttered a ‘specific word’ that is taken as an input to the proposed voice-based recognition system. The proposed mechanism then determines if the signal was either ‘high beam’ or ‘low beam’ to control the car headlights. To activate the headlight’s beam, this voice recognised signal is sent to a processing board. Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficient (MFCC) is used in the recognition mechanism to extract the uttered word before being fed into Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) and Support Vector Machines (SVM) as a classification engine. The proposed automatic voice-based recognition was evaluated via experimental work. The results show that the proposed automatic voice-based recognition for headlights activation control involving MFCC feature works effectively in which SVM gives slightly better performance accuracy when compared to ANN. In addition to a lesser training time, the resulting accuracy using SVM in the training and testing phase is 93.595% and 91.74% respectively. Meanwhile, ANN has an accuracy of 89.39% and 88.16% in the training and testing respectively.

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Easy assessment of individuals with various severities of autism spectrum disorder, focusing on motor timing control

Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders ◽

10.1016/j.rasd.2020.101682 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 79 ◽

pp. 101682

Author(s):

Chie Morimoto ◽

Shogo Nakazono ◽

Satoshi Kobori ◽

Fumiko Kaneko ◽

Sho Muratake ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽

Autism Spectrum ◽

Spectrum Disorder ◽

Motor Timing ◽

Timing Control

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Diminished Motor Timing Control in Children Referred for Diagnosis of Learning Problems

Developmental Neuropsychology ◽

10.1207/s15326942dn1702_03 ◽

2000 ◽

Vol 17 (2) ◽

pp. 181-197 ◽

Cited By ~ 18

Author(s):

Deborah P. Waber ◽

Michael D. Weiler ◽

David C. Bellinger ◽

David J. Marcus ◽

Peter W. Forbes ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Learning Problems ◽

Motor Timing ◽

Timing Control

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Dysfunctional Timing in Traumatic Brain Injury Patients: Co-occurrence of Cognitive, Motor, and Perceptual Deficits

Frontiers in Psychology ◽

10.3389/fpsyg.2021.731898 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 ◽

Author(s):

Laura Verga ◽

Michael Schwartze ◽

Sven Stapert ◽

Ieke Winkens ◽

Sonja A. Kotz

Keyword(s):

Traumatic Brain Injury ◽

Brain Injury ◽

Everyday Life ◽

Processing Speed ◽

Motor Behavior ◽

Human Cognition ◽

Motor Timing ◽

Functional Impairments ◽

Wide Range ◽

Everyday Life Activities

Timing is an essential part of human cognition and of everyday life activities, such as walking or holding a conversation. Previous studies showed that traumatic brain injury (TBI) often affects cognitive functions such as processing speed and time-sensitive abilities, causing long-term sequelae as well as daily impairments. However, the existing evidence on timing capacities in TBI is mostly limited to perception and the processing of isolated intervals. It is therefore open whether the observed deficits extend to motor timing and to continuous dynamic tasks that more closely match daily life activities. The current study set out to answer these questions by assessing audio motor timing abilities and their relationship with cognitive functioning in a group of TBI patients (n = 15) and healthy matched controls. We employed a comprehensive set of tasks aiming at testing timing abilities across perception and production and from single intervals to continuous auditory sequences. In line with previous research, we report functional impairments in TBI patients concerning cognitive processing speed and perceptual timing. Critically, these deficits extended to motor timing: The ability to adjust to tempo changes in an auditory pacing sequence was impaired in TBI patients, and this motor timing deficit covaried with measures of processing speed. These findings confirm previous evidence on perceptual and cognitive timing deficits resulting from TBI and provide first evidence for comparable deficits in motor behavior. This suggests basic co-occurring perceptual and motor timing impairments that may factor into a wide range of daily activities. Our results thus place TBI into the wider range of pathologies with well-documented timing deficits (such as Parkinson’s disease) and encourage the search for novel timing-based therapeutic interventions (e.g., employing dynamic and/or musical stimuli) with high transfer potential to everyday life activities.

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Emotion recognition and confidence ratings predicted by vocal stimulus type and acoustic parameters

10.31234/osf.io/kqy2n ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Adi Lausen ◽

Kurt Hammerschmidt

Keyword(s):

Emotion Recognition ◽

Stimulus Type ◽

Emotional Expressions ◽

Acoustic Features ◽

Acoustic Parameters ◽

Performance Accuracy ◽

The Impact ◽

The Voice ◽

Vocal Emotion

Human speech expresses emotional meaning not only through semantics, but also through certain attributes of the voice, such as pitch or loudness. In investigations of vocal emotion recognition, there is considerable variability in the types of stimuli and procedures used to examine their influence on emotion recognition. In addition, a person’s confidence in the assessments of another person’s emotional state has been argued to strongly influence performance accuracy in emotion recognition tasks. Nevertheless, such associations have rarely been studied previously. We addressed this gap by examining the impact of vocal stimulus type and prosodic speech attributes on emotion recognition and a person’s confidence in a given response. We analysed a total of 1038 emotional expressions according to a baseline set of 13 prosodic acoustic parameters. Results showed that these parameters provided sufficient discrimination between expressions of emotional categories to permit accurate statistical classification. Emotion recognition and confidence judgments were found to depend on stimulus material as they could be predicted by different constellations of acoustic features. Finally, results indicated that the correct classification of emotional expressions elicited increased confident judgments. Together, these findings show that vocal stimulus type and prosodic attributes of speech strongly influence emotion recognition and listeners’ confidence in these given responses.

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