بررسي رابطه اشارات دستي و گفتار در بزرگسالان داراي لكنت

Investigation ofthe Relationship Between Hand Gestures andSpeech in Adults Who Stutter

Objective: Gesture s of the hands and anus have long been observed to accompany speech in spontaneous conversation. However, the way in which these two mode s of expression are related in production is not yet fully understood. So, the present study aims to investigate the spontaneous gestures that accompany speech in adults who stutter in comparison to fluent controls. Materials & Methods: In this cross -sectional and comparative research, ten adult s who stutter were selected randomly from speech and language pathology clinics and compared with ten healthy person s as control group who were matched with stutterers according to sex, age and education. The cartoon story-retelling task used to e lici t spo ntaneo us ges ture s th at accompa ny sp eech. Participants were asked to watch the animation carefully and then retell the storyline in as much detail as possible to a listener sitt ing across from him or her and his or her narration was video recorded simultaneously. Then recorded utterances and gesture s were analyzed . The statistical methods such as Kolmogorov- Srnirnov and Independent t-test were used for data analyzing . Results: The results indicated that stutterers in comparison to controls in averag e use fewer iconic ges tures in their narrati on (P=O.OOS). Also, stutterers in comparison to controls in averag e use fewer iconic ges tures per each utterance and word (P=O.O19). Furth ermore, the execution of gesture production durin g moments of dysfluency revealed that more than 70% of the ges tures produced with stuttering were frozen or abandoned at the moment of dysfluency. Conclusion: It seems ges ture and speech have such an intricate and deep association that show similar frequency and timing pattern s and move completely parallel to each other in such a way that defi cit in speec h results in deficiency in hand gesture.