Seventy-nine children (ages 3 through 7) were asked to discriminate between the speech (fluent and disfluent) of two puppets, identify the one who "speaks like you," and evaluate their speech. Children from age 3 showed evidence of some awareness of disfluencies but most children reached full awareness at 5. Negative evaluation of…

This study evaluated the language abilities of 15 young children with early stuttering symptoms and parents' views of the children's communicative development. Results indicated generally depressed performance on all child speech and language measures by the children who stutter. Parent report was closely attuned to measured child performance.…

This study evaluated recorded performances of 84 children of whom 22 had persistent stuttering. Although initially the persistent stuttering group had significantly poorer phonological skills, assessment after 1 and 2 years found no differences indicating faster phonological improvement for the persistent stuttering group. Results raise questions…

Ten preschool subjects exhibiting more disfluencies than 50 other subjects with language disorders were found to be older and score higher on vocabulary. Findings suggest some children with language disorders are at risk for fluency breakdown because of dysynchronies in development of lexical and syntactic aspects of language or as a result of…