ZiXuan Qi

The Difference of Performances And Brain Structures Between Monolingual Stutterers And Bilingual Stutterers

Started Dec. 20, 2022

Abstract or project description

Stuttering is a speech disorder in which the flow of speech is disrupted by involuntary repetitions and prolongations of sounds, syllables, words, or phrases. It is also characterized by involuntary silent pauses or blocks in which the person who stutters is unable to produce sounds, and it prevails in every region of the world. The etiology of stuttering is yet unknown, but previous studies have found different genes arrangement and brain dysfunction between people who stutter (PWS) and people who don’t stutter (PWNS), which pave the way for future research. Bilingualism is the use of more than one natural language, within the category of multilingualism, whose speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world population.

Multilingual speakers have been documented with higher levels of typical dis-fluency in their speech than their monolingual peers, which put multilingual speakers at greater risk of misdiagnosis as individuals who stutter. However, disparages are investigated between monolingual people who stutter (MWS) and bilingual people who stutter (BWS). Researchers have been examined MWS and BWS separately, yet limited research have been done to compare different performances between them. In this work, the overview of MWS and BWS are introduced: different types and traits of stutter between MWS and BWS are compared and the difference between brain structure, executive force, motor control, and cognitive reserve are investigated and synthesized based on previous studies. MWS appear to show deficits in executive control, while BWS seem to be classified as having greater potential in language, thus transferring to general executive control.