Greg SNYDER, Sydney GULLEY, and Elizabeth WYLOT
The University of Mississippi, University, MS, USA
Abstract. This study tested the effects of a tactile pacing smartphone application on overt stuttering frequency. A smartphone application was developed by StutterLess LLC that uses the touch screens and vibration motors within Android or iPhone smartphones to provide discreet user-activated vibrotactile pacing. This study reports data for increased overt fluency of speech in an adult stuttering population, whereby participants spoke concurrently with initiatory tactile pulses (ranging from approximately 0.5 to 1.0 second intervals) originating from a handheld smartphone during speech production. Participants who stutter used the StutterLess smartphone application for 3 weeks; data was collected on a weekly basis over videoconference. Results indicate that the StutterLess smartphone application was an effective fluency enhancer for over 60% of research participants; during this 3 week trial, users showed no signs of adaptation to vibrotactile pacing, but instead demonstrated trends toward increased fluency enhancement over time.
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