The Role of Selected Lexical Factors on Confrontation Naming Accuracy, Speed, and Fluency in Adults Who Do and Do Not Stutter

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate whether lexical access in adults who stutter (AWS) differs from that in people who do not stutter. Specifically, the authors examined the role of 3 lexical factors on naming speed, accuracy, and fluency: word frequency, neighborhood density, and neighborhood frequency. If stuttering results from an impairment in lexical access, these factors were hypothesized to differentially affect AWS performance on a confrontation naming task. Method: Twenty-five AWS and 25 normally fluent comparison speakers, matched for age and education, participated in a confrontation naming task designed to explore within-speaker performance on naming accuracy, speed, and fluency based on stimulus word frequency and neighborhood characteristics. Accuracy, fluency, and reaction time (from acoustic waveform analysis) were computed. Results: In general, AWS demonstrated the same effects of lexical factors on their naming as did adults who do not stutter. However, accuracy of naming was reduced for AWS. Stuttering rate was influenced by word frequency but not other factors. Conclusions: Results suggest that AWS could have a fundamental deficit in lexical retrieval, but this deficit is unlikely to be at the level of the word's abstract phonological representation. Implications for further research are discussed.