Phonatory and manual reaction times of women with idiopathic spasmodic dysphonia.

This investigation compared the simple reaction times of 10 idiopathic spasmodic dysphonic women and 10 normal-speaking women matched individually for age and handedness. The reaction time stimulus in all response conditions was the offset of a 1000-Hz pure tone. Two of the experimental conditions required right and left forefinger button pressing. The remaining four experimental conditions required phonatory responses. The nonspeech phonatory responses consisted of inspiratory phonation and expiratory throat clearing; the speech-like phonatory responses required abrupt initiation of the isolated vowel and the word. The spasmodic dysphonic patients differed (p less than or equal to .05) from their matched controls only during production of. The results are compared to previous reaction time investigations and are related to factors which potentially can influence sensory-motor pathways prior to and during speech.