Altered Auditory Feedback and Stuttering

Alteration of the speech signal that speakers hear as they talk (i.e., the auditory feedback signal) may result in changes to the way they produce speech. For example, speech quality deteriorates after a person experiences a prolonged period of deafness. On the other hand, some alterations of the auditory feedback signal can have a positive effect on speech production: specifically, stuttering may decrease under certain electronically created conditions of altered auditory feedback (AAF).

These conditions include (a) masking noise that accompanies and competes with the feedback signal; (b) delayed auditory feedback (DAF), which imposes a delay in delivery of the speech signal to the speaker’s ear relative to when it was produced; and c) frequency altered feedback (FAF), which shifts frequencies of the speaker’s voice either ...