The paper summarizes recent thinking on several aspects of early childhood stuttering, including the acquisition of fluency in young children and its relationship to language acquisition, the relationship of normal childhood nonfluencies to early stuttering, stuttering's relationship to language acquisition, and psycholinguistic influences on…

The influence of two parameters of self-initiated time-out from speaking were investigated with 33 adolescent and adult stutterers. When given the opportunity to determine time-out duration, subjects chose a relatively brief period. Significant improvements in fluency were observed during all three time-out conditions. (Author/SEW)

This study compared duration characteristics of single repetitions of single-syllable words in the speech of 15 preschool children near the onset of stuttering to those of 18 nonstuttering children. There appeared to be a tendency for repetitions of very early stutterers to be faster than repetitions of nonstuttering children. (Author/DB)

This study examined interjudge agreement levels for five adult listeners assessing either overt stuttering or disfluency types in the spontaneous speech of eight young children. Results showed that the interjudge reliability for judgments based on a disfluency taxonomy was not significantly different from that based on stuttering. The importance…

Preliminary findings from a longitudinal study of 32 preschool children who stutter and 32 nonstuttering controls reveal 4 subgroups: (1) persistent stuttering; (2) late recovery; (3) early recovery; and (4) control. Comparative data for the groups regarding frequency of disfluency, acoustic features, phonologic skills, language development,…

This article suggests a possible link between incipient stuttering and early difficulty in language formulation. The hypothesis offers a unifying explanation of an array of empirical observations. Among these observations are the following: early stuttering occurs only on the first word of a syntactic structure; stuttering does not appear to be…

Voicing onset changes between control conditions and three fluency-evoking conditions (choral reading, delayed auditory feedback, and noise) were studied in 10 individuals who stutter and in 12 controls. Results indicate that although fluency-evoking conditions modified some voicing-onset behaviors, these modifications did not relate to…

Features of beginning stuttering in young children are reviewed. Attention is directed to studies of: frequency, type, and duration of disfluency, including number of repeated units and additional temporal aspects of instances of sound, syllable, and whole-word repetition; and associated speech and nonspeech behaviors produced by children who…

This study compared verbal disfluency and accessory characteristics of 15 African-American and 15 White male stutterers (ages 8-12). Overall, no significant differences were found in verbal- or visual-disfluency behaviors on either reading or conversation tasks between the two groups. Also, no significant differences were found in attitudes toward…

Speech and hearing screening conducted with 136 penitentiary inmates revealed normal prevalence figures for articulation and fluency disorders but appreciably higher prevalence for voice and hearing disorders. Possible correlations with age levels 21-25 years and educational levels 0-6 years were noted. (Author/CL)

The difficulties of generalization and maintenance in stuttering treatment is discussed. Three strategies for promoting generalization and maintenance in school settings are suggested based on current research evidence: probing and training for generalization; incorporating real-life elements into therapy; and training clients to self-regulate…

This study investigated the disfluencies and phonic tics in an 18- year-old male with Tourette syndrome before and after a 3-week period of speech therapy. The subject's speech pattern did not completely conform to the classic pattern of stuttering but bore more resemblance to cluttering. A limited number of therapy sessions resulted in a…

The purpose of the present study was to examine relations between children's emotional reactivity, emotion regulation and stuttering. Participants were 65 preschool children who stutter (CWS) and 56 preschool children who do not stutter (CWNS). Parents completed the Behavior Style Questionnaire (BSQ) [McDevitt S. C., & Carey, W. B. (1978). A…

Stuttering has been considered a heritable disorder since the 1930s. There have been different models of transmission that have been proposed most involving a polygenic component with or without a major locus. In spite of these models, the characteristics being transmitted are not known. This study used two different tasks--a tapping task that is…