Recognition: unknown
Aligning Stuttered-Speech Research with End-User Needs: Scoping Review, Survey, and Guidelines
Pith reviewed 2026-05-09 23:49 UTC · model grok-4.3
The pith
A scoping review and stakeholder survey show that stuttered-speech research often fails to address the priorities of adults who stutter and speech-language pathologists.
A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.
Core claim
By conducting a scoping review of the literature on stuttered speech and surveying stakeholders including adults who stutter and speech-language pathologists, the authors develop a taxonomy of the research and identify divergences from end-user needs, leading to guidelines for aligning future work with the actual requirements of the stuttering community.
What carries the argument
A taxonomy of stuttered-speech research derived from the scoping review and stakeholder survey, used to map and contrast research priorities with end-user needs.
If this is right
- Current research can be classified using the proposed taxonomy to reveal overlooked areas.
- Specific divergences, such as in evaluation methods and priorities, can be addressed by following the outlined guidelines.
- Future speech technology research will better support end-users if it incorporates the identified stakeholder needs.
- The guidelines provide directions for interdisciplinary dialogue between researchers and the stuttering community.
Where Pith is reading between the lines
- Speech recognition systems for stuttered speech could improve in real-world performance if research follows these guidelines.
- The approach of combining literature review with direct stakeholder input could be applied to other forms of atypical speech or communication disorders.
- Developers might create more inclusive tools by consulting the taxonomy and guidelines when setting research agendas.
Load-bearing premise
The scoping review captures the full scope of relevant literature on stuttered speech and the survey responses from 70 stakeholders offer representative insights into the needs of the broader stuttering community.
What would settle it
A comprehensive re-examination of the literature that uncovers major missed papers altering the taxonomy, or a larger-scale survey yielding substantially different needs and priorities from those reported.
Figures
read the original abstract
Atypical speech is receiving greater attention in speech technology research, but much of this work unfolds with limited interdisciplinary dialogue. For stuttered speech in particular, it is widely recognised that current speech recognition systems fall short in practice, and current evaluation methods and research priorities are not systematically grounded in end-user experiences and needs. In this work, we analyse these gaps through 1) a scoping review of papers that deal with stuttered speech and 2) a survey of 70 stakeholders, including adults who stutter and speech-language pathologists. By analysing these two perspectives, we propose a taxonomy of stuttered-speech research, identify where current research directions diverge from the needs articulated by stakeholders, and conclude by outlining concrete guidelines and directions towards addressing the real needs of the stuttering community.
Editorial analysis
A structured set of objections, weighed in public.
Referee Report
Summary. The manuscript conducts a scoping review of the literature on stuttered speech in speech technology research together with a survey of 70 stakeholders (adults who stutter and speech-language pathologists). From these two sources it derives a taxonomy of current research, identifies divergences between published work and stakeholder-articulated needs, and offers concrete guidelines for future research directions.
Significance. If the review protocol and survey sampling are shown to be systematic and representative, the work would provide a valuable bridge between technical speech-processing research and the practical requirements of the stuttering community. Explicit stakeholder input and the resulting taxonomy/guidelines could help reorient evaluation metrics and system design priorities toward more usable and inclusive ASR systems.
major comments (2)
- [§3] §3 (Scoping Review): The search strategy, databases, exact query strings, inclusion/exclusion criteria, and screening process are described at too high a level to permit replication or independent assessment of literature completeness. Because the central claim of 'divergences' between research directions and stakeholder needs rests on the review having captured the relevant corpus, this omission is load-bearing.
- [§4] §4 (Survey): Recruitment channels, response rate, demographic stratification (age, stuttering severity, gender, geography, language), and any steps taken to reduce self-selection bias are not reported for the n=70 sample. Without these details the claim that the responses represent 'the stuttering community' and therefore justify the taxonomy and guidelines cannot be evaluated.
minor comments (2)
- [§3] A PRISMA-style flow diagram or explicit table summarizing the number of papers screened, included, and excluded at each stage would improve transparency of the scoping review.
- [§5] The taxonomy presentation would be clearer if accompanied by a single summary table or figure that maps each category to the specific review findings and survey items that support it.
Simulated Author's Rebuttal
We thank the referee for their constructive and detailed feedback, which highlights important areas for improving the transparency and replicability of our methods. We address each major comment below and commit to substantial revisions that will strengthen the manuscript without altering its core claims or findings.
read point-by-point responses
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Referee: [§3] §3 (Scoping Review): The search strategy, databases, exact query strings, inclusion/exclusion criteria, and screening process are described at too high a level to permit replication or independent assessment of literature completeness. Because the central claim of 'divergences' between research directions and stakeholder needs rests on the review having captured the relevant corpus, this omission is load-bearing.
Authors: We agree that the current description in §3 is insufficiently detailed for replication. In the revised manuscript we will expand this section to report the complete search strategy, including all databases queried (ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore, PubMed, Google Scholar, and arXiv), the exact Boolean query strings, the full list of inclusion and exclusion criteria with justifications, the number of records screened at each stage, and a PRISMA flow diagram. These additions will directly address the load-bearing concern and allow independent verification of corpus completeness. revision: yes
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Referee: [§4] §4 (Survey): Recruitment channels, response rate, demographic stratification (age, stuttering severity, gender, geography, language), and any steps taken to reduce self-selection bias are not reported for the n=70 sample. Without these details the claim that the responses represent 'the stuttering community' and therefore justify the taxonomy and guidelines cannot be evaluated.
Authors: We acknowledge that the survey methods section currently lacks the requested granularity. The revised version will include explicit details on recruitment channels (stuttering advocacy organizations, social media groups, professional SLP networks, and university clinics), the overall response rate, a demographic table breaking down the 70 participants by age, self-reported stuttering severity, gender, geographic region, and primary language, and the specific steps taken to mitigate self-selection bias (targeted outreach to underrepresented groups and inclusion of both clinical and community-based respondents). We will also add a limitations subsection discussing the sample's representativeness. revision: yes
Circularity Check
No circularity: derivation rests on external literature review and independent survey data
full rationale
The paper's chain proceeds from a scoping review of external papers plus a newly collected survey of 70 stakeholders to a taxonomy, divergence identification, and guidelines. No equations, fitted parameters, or predictions are defined within the paper that later reappear as outputs. No self-citation is invoked as a load-bearing uniqueness theorem or ansatz. The work is self-contained against external benchmarks (published literature and fresh stakeholder responses) and does not reduce any central claim to its own inputs by construction.
Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger
axioms (2)
- domain assumption The scoping review process comprehensively identifies and categorizes relevant papers on stuttered speech.
- domain assumption The survey responses from 70 stakeholders accurately reflect the broader needs and priorities of adults who stutter and speech-language pathologists.
Reference graph
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Aligning Stuttered-Speech Research with End-User Needs: Scoping Review, Survey, and Guidelines
Introduction In recent years, research at the intersection of speech technol- ogy and atypical speech, including stuttering, has increased, with applications of automatic speech recognition (ASR) [1], speech synthesis [2], and event classification [3]. Stuttering is a variable, multidimensional speech disorder that disrupts speech fluency, leading to the ...
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Literature Mapping 2.1. Search and Annotation Protocol We conducted a scoping review of research work on stuttered speech processing to characterise the current state of research. To identify relevant papers, we performed a keyword search resulting in680papers published between 2010 and October 2025 across all open access publications indexed by Semantic ...
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Stakeholder Survey 3.1. Survey Methodology One of the main goals of this work is to characterise what stakeholders’ expectations are and identify how stuttered- speech research can better serve stakeholders. We designed two complementary online questionnaires: one targetingPWSand one targetingSLPs. Both questionnaires were co-designed iteratively with two...
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