ERIC Number: ED408808
Record Type: RIE
Publication Date: 1991-Dec
Pages: 161
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
(Non)Verbal Behavior of Young Stutterers and Their Mothers. Final Report.
Conture, Edward G.
This final report describes activities and accomplishments of a 3-year project which analyzed the speech and related behaviors of 28 young children (mean age 52.5 months) who stuttered, their mothers, and similar non-stuttering children and mothers. A loosely structured conversation between each mother and child was recorded and analyzed. In addition to appreciable group differences in disfluencies, the study found that stuttering children exhibited significantly more of three nonspeech behaviors: eyelid blinking, eyeball movement to the left, and upper lip raising. The study also found that eye contact between mothers and young stutterers was significantly more frequent during stuttering than for normally fluent peers, and that mothers of stutterers produced significantly more nonspeech behaviors including eye blinks and various lip movements during stuttering incidents than at other times. One of the analyses found that the 15 most commonly occurring nonspeech behaviors of mothers of stutterers were very similar to the 21 most commonly occurring nonspeech behaviors of young nonstutterers. Results suggest the importance of understanding the nature and potential bi-directional influences of these nonverbal behaviors in any theory or therapy attempting to account for the onset and development of stuttering. Attached are eight papers published about the study: (1) "Young Stutterers' Nonspeech Behaviors during Stuttering" (Edward G. Conture and Ellen M. Kelly); (2) "Behaviors at the Onset of Stuttering" (Howard D. Schwartz and others); (3) "Eye Contact between Young Stutterers and Their Mothers" (Lisa R. LaSalle and Edward G. Conture); (4) "Childhood Stuttering: What Is It and Who Does It?" (Edward G. Conture); (5) "The Child Who Stutters: to the Pediatrician"; "(6) "Stuttering" (Edward G. Conture and Lesley Wolk); (7) "Intervention with School-Age Stutters: A Parent-Child Fluency Group Approach" (Ellen M. Kelly and Edward G. Conture); (8) "Comorbidity of Stuttering and Disordered Phonology in Young Children" (Lesley Wolk and others). Individual papers contain references. (DB)
Publication Type: Collected Works - General; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: Special Education Programs (ED/OSERS), Washington, DC.
Authoring Institution: Syracuse Univ., NY. Div. of Special Education and Rehabilitation.
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
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