Childhood stuttering and speech disfluencies in relation to children’s mean length of utterance: a preliminary study

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of utterance length and complexity relative to the children’s mean length of utterance (MLU) on stuttering-like disfluencies (SLDs) for children who stutter (CWS) and nonstuttering-like disfluencies (nonSLDs) for children who do not stutter (CWNS). Participants were 12 (3;1–5;11, years;months) children: 6 CWS and 6 age-matched (±5 months) CWNS, with equal numbers in each talker group (CWS and CWNS) exhibiting MLU from the lower to the upper end of normal limits. Data were based on audio–video recordings of each child in two separate settings (i.e., home and laboratory) during loosely structured, 30-min parent–child conversational interactions and analyzed in terms of each participant’s utterance length, MLU, frequency and type of speech disfluency. Results indicate that utterances above children’s MLU are more apt to be stuttered or disfluent and that both stuttering-like as well as nonstuttering-like disfluencies are most apt to occur on utterances that are both long and complex. Findings were taken to support the hypothesis that the relative “match” or “mismatch” between linguistic components of an utterance (i.e., utterance length and complexity) and a child’s language proficiency (i.e., MLU) influences the frequency of the child’s stuttering/speech disfluency.

Educational objectives: The reader will learn about and be able to: (1) compare different procedures for assessing the relationship among stuttering, length and complexity of utterance, (2) describe the difference between relative and absolute measures of utterance length, (3) discuss the measurement and value of mean length of utterance and its possible contributions to childhood stuttering, and (4) describe how length and complexity influence nonstuttering-like disfluencies of children who stutter as well as the stuttering-like disfluencies of children who do not stutter.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants were two groups of six children (N=12) between the ages of 3;1 and 5;11 (years;months) who do (CWS) and do not stutter (CWNS) stutter. Each CWS was matched in age (±5 months) to a CWNS participant and all participants were boys, with one exception (CWNS participant 4 was a girl). All participants were native speakers of American English with no history of hearing, neurological, psychological, or intellectual problems per parent report and examiner observation. All participants were

Descriptive/demographic data

Table 4 provides descriptive data for both talker groups, that is, children who stutter (N=6) and children who do not stutter (N=6). As would be expected based on talker group classification criteria, CWS participants exhibited an appreciably higher percentage of SLDs (M=12.0%; SD=2.17) than the CWNS (M=0.43%; SD=0.29). Conversely, CWNS produced an appreciably greater percentage of nonSLDs (M=4.9%; SD=0.59) than the CWS (M=1.0%; SD=0.65). Thus, because CWS produced so few nonSLDs, assessment of

Discussion

Overall, findings from this and most previous studies indicate that increases in either utterance length or complexity or both are associated with increases in stuttering and speech disfluencies for both CWS and CWNS, respectively. While most studies have found that utterance length and complexity interact in their influence on speech disfluencies, some studies have found that complexity has more impact on disfluency than length (Brundage & Bernstein-Ratner, 1989, Logan & Conture, 1995) whereas

Conclusions

Present findings indicate that utterances above children’s MLU are more apt to contain instances of stuttering or speech disfluency which suggests that the presence of stuttering/speech disfluency within an utterance is not independent of the child’s MLU. One might predict, therefore, that communicative situations that (in)directly encourage children to produce utterances above their MLU would be situations that are most apt to be disfluent, while situations that (in)directly encourage children

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Ralph N. Ohde and Stephen M. Camarata for their thoughtful suggestions regarding both the development of this project and revision of this manuscript. In addition, the authors would like to thank Julie Anderson and Mark Pellowski for their assistance in data collection. Finally, the authors would like to thank the participants and their families for their significant contribution to this study. Research supported by NIH grant (DC00523) to Vanderbilt University.

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