ABSTRACT: Stuttering is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by the disruption of rhythmic flow and timing in speech production. Speech productions of people who stutter are influenced by the perception of prosodic aspects of their own speech, suggesting that people who stutter may have difficulty in perceiving prosodic elements of their own speech causing disfluency. To investigate this possibility, adults who stutter (n=15) and adult fluent speakers (n=13) were compared in their ability to perceive distal rhythmic and timing cues in speech. Adults who stutter exhibited perception of the distal prosodic cues and an ability to internally generate rhythm and timing for parsing of syllables and words in speech. These findings provide evidence of intact perception of rhythm and timing of speech in adults who stutter.
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