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 investigation compared changes in articulatory rate over a period of 2 years in subgroups of preschool children who stutter (either persistently or who recovered without intervention) and normally fluent children. Results indicated no significant differences among the three groups when articulation rate was measured in syllables per second,…

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 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…

A study investigated frequency change and duration of the second formant (F2) transition in speech samples recorded close to stuttering onset in 10 preschoolers who stutter, 10 who recovered from stuttering, and 10 controls. Near stuttering onset, children whose stuttering persisted demonstrated significantly smaller frequency change than the…