Semantic Priming Effect of Visual and Auditory Stimuli in Picture Naming Skills of Preschool Children Who Stutter

Ha, Young-Ji; Lee, Eun-Ju

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2011;16(1): 62-73.

Young-Ji Ha^` , and Eun-Ju Lee^`

하영지(Young-Ji Ha)|이은주(Eun-Ju Lee)

ABSTRACT

Background & Objectives
This study focusing on the language processes of children who stutter (CWS) aims to determine whether the language plan or process is relatively slower or inefficient compared to those of children who do not stutter (CWNS) and to identify any correlations between a continually developing stuttering and difficulties in the language process.
Methods
This study compared CWS's SRT differences depending on visual and auditory priming stimuli and the existence of semantic relationship in CWNS. The target children were eight CWS ranging from 4.0-6.6 years of age who met the required conditions of intelligence, linguistic ability, vocabulary ability, articulation ability and ten CWNS who met the same criteria. In this study, the researcher used tasks in which the children chose one of a set of pictures based on the stimulus pattern and the semantic relationship. The SRT of each task performance was measured and analyzed.
Results
Normal children had significantly faster SRTs than did CWS in the semantic word tasks regardless of stimulus pattern. However, the CWS did not show a significant difference in SRT based on the presence or absence of a semantic relationship. The CWNS responded to visual priming stimuli more quickly than they did to auditory ones regardless of the existence of a semantic relationship and showed significant differences according to stimulus pattern. For the CWS, their SRT was faster for visual priming stimuli compared to that of auditory stimuli, illustrating a significant difference according to the stimulus pattern. However, in the semantically unrelated conditions, there were no differences according to stimulus pattern.
Discussion & Conclusion
Compared with CWNS, the CWS appeared to inefficiently utilize semantically related auditory information, indicating that the language processing ability of CWS may be relatively slower or more inefficient than that of CWNS.