ABSTRACT
It is a matter of interest, and potentially considerable clinical significance, that the only population with a reduced prevalence of stuttering is the hearing impaired. Relatedly, one of the most widely researched areas of stuttering in the latter half of the twentieth century has been the relationship between stuttering and auditory processing, and attempting to discover processing differences between those who stutter and those who do not. Findings have led some researchers to argue that stuttering may be related to perceptual, in addition to production, elements. In this chapter we discuss a number of different perspectives on the subject and consider the possibility that stuttering is a disorder of perception rather than production. We have already seen in chapter 2 that stuttering has been associated with differences in hemispheric processing of speech and language, and we will consider the evidence that there are functional neurological differences amongst those who stutter relating to the processing of auditory information.
