Stamning och språkliga förmågor : En studie om förmågan att identifiera ord med omkastade bokstäver, i en så kallad Word jumble-uppgift.

Sammanfattning: The cause of stuttering is still unclear and debated. One theory is that stuttering has a connection to linguistic abilities. McGill et al. (2016) reported that people who stuttered performed lower when identifying words where the letters had been scrambled. The current study aimed to investigate whether the result in the study by McGill et al. (2016) could be repeated, to expand the knowledge of stuttering and linguistic abilities. In the current study, response time was measured up to a non-verbal response, by pushing a button. This was made by using a Word jumble task as well as working memory tasks to distinguish linguistic working memory from other types of working memory. A group of 14 adults who stutter and a matched control group were recruited. The words in Word jumble consisted of four to six letters. The participants who stuttered gave statistically significantly fewer correct answers for the 6-lettered words (p = 0,031). They tended to have a longer response time for words with 6 letters (p = 0,056). A “Word jumble index” (number of correct answers divided by response time) was computed for the 6-lettered words (WJI6). The participants who stuttered had statistically significant lower WJI6 (p = 0,024) compared to the control group. An explorative correlation analysis for auditory sequential memory and WJI6 showed a sub group of 6 adults who stuttered that had lower performance at both auditory sequential memory and Word jumble. Potentially, deficits in phonological encoding and sub-vocal rehearsal, linguistic abilities involved in both tasks, explains the results. It is possible that phonological encoding and sub-vocal rehearsal are affected by increased cognitive load.