Early and late components of the contingent negative variation prior to manual and speech responses in stutterers and non-stutterers

The early and late components of the CNV were measured in 18 stutterers and 18 non-stutterers, all dextral, prior to a manual and 3 speech tasks. It was hypothesized that, due to a proposed deficit in articulatory timing, prior to the more complex speech tasks, stutterers would show reduced late CNV amplitudes over Broca's area when compared to the non-stutterers. This hypothesis was not confirmed. In both groups, there was a finding of greater late CNV activity over the right hemisphere prior to speech responses. Explanations for this finding in terms of (a) CNV polarity, and (b) right hemisphere involvement in the speech responses used, are proposed. It is suggested that attention be paid to the nature of the response when attempting to record slow brain potentials prior to speech.

The augmenting/reducing phenomenon in the auditory evoked potential

Auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) were recorded to 4 intensities of tones (70, 80, 90, 100 dB) in 22 normal subjects. Augmenting (generally increasing amplitude with increasing stimulus intensity) and reducing (a levelling off or decrease in amplitude with increasing stimulus intensity) were found to occur at both central (Cz, C3, C4) and temporal (T3, T4) placements, regardless of which peak or peak-through measure was examined. There were generally low levels of agreement between central amplitude/intensity response patterns and those at temporal placements. An individual was seldom classified the same way (i.e. augmenter or reducer) when the augmenting or reducing was assessed using different AEP measures. These results suggest that in the AEP the suitability of the conventional definition and the validity of certain interpretations of augmenting/reducing are questionable.