The study investigated: (1) whether the mothers of young stuttering children differ from the mothers of young normally disfluent children in their verbal interaction patterns during free play with their children; and (2) whether disfluency in young children is related systematically to the type of speech act expressed. Four preschoolers and their mothers participated in the study. Forty-five minute conversational speech samples which were audio- and video-recorded were analyzed. Results indicated that the speech act categories used most frequently by the two groups of mothers did not vary in percentage of occurrence. The mothers did differ, however, in the number of utterances they produced when compared to the number of utterances produced by their children. The mothers of stuttering children talked more frequently. There was also a trend for the normally disfluent children to produce more disfluencies on statements while the young stuttering children were more disfluent on descriptions. Both groups of children exhibited more whole- and part-word repetitions than any other types of disfluency. (Author/DB)