Purpose: The primary purpose of this study was to describe the frequency and types of speech disfluencies that are produced by bilingual Spanish-English (SE) speaking children who do not stutter. The secondary purpose was to determine whether their disfluent speech is mediated by language dominance and/or language produced. Method: Spanish and…

Results indicated that both monolingual and bilingual stutterers were more dysfluent on voiceless consonants; the bilingual stutterers stuttered more on the nasal sounds; and phonetic influences on stuttering might be dependent on the number of languages spoken as well as specific language in which the effects were observed. (Author/CL)

Stuttering frequency in 10 adult stutterers (ages 22-48 years) was measured when speaking spontaneously alone, then with an adult male conversationalist, and finally speaking alone again. Percent stuttering increased in the conversational situation compared with the first alone situation and decreased again during the second alone situation.…

A literature review of conditions that might be expected to increase stuttering reveals that most investigators have not been able to raise stuttering frequency above control or base levels. Although some variables may increase stuttering, the research is too meager to speculate about underlying factors. (Author/CL)

Approximately 47,200 spontaneous utterances of four nonstuttering children were analyzed for the occurrence of developmental disfluency from the time of one word utterances through the emergence of beginning syntax. Variations were found among the children's profiles with systematic changes in disfluency at each succeeding mean length of utterance…

This study analyzed a conversational speech sample from 10 preschool children stuttering for a year or less and age- and sex-matched nonstuttering children. Analysis indicated no significant between-group differences for either the duration of acoustically measured sound/syllable repetitions and sound prolongations or the number of repeated units…

Cluster formation in speech disfluencies of 15 preschool stuttering children and 15 nonstuttering controls was studied and compared. Clustering was found to be a significant factor in disfluent speech for both normal and stuttering children, but proportions of clustered disfluencies and size of clusters were significantly greater in the…

Speech-related reaction time measures and fluency-related measures of 24 adult stutterers and a like number of nonstutterers were assessed to determine their diagnostic discriminative power. Findings suggested that both fluency failures and the duration of laryngeal adjustment time are useful diagnostic measures for discriminating stutterers from…

This study attempted to empirically demonstrate the validity of a twofold classification of speech disfluency in adult stutterers. Instrumentation and procedures permitting reliable identification and coding of 9 disfluency behaviors were developed and applied to monologues of 180 adult stutterers. Factor analyses supported the two-factor…

The experiment investigated the speech performance of 23 adult stutterers both in social isolation and while an investigator was with them. (CB)

Occurrence of residual stutterings on adjacent words caused by blotting out words at random in a reading passage was studied. (KW)

Stutterers were found to have a significantly greater number of pauses 150 to 250 msec long than nonstutterers, indicating that even the fluent speech of stutterers differs from normal speech. (Author/KW)

Paralinguistic behaviors, including speech rates and turn-taking behaviors, of five-year-old boys who stutter (n=11) and boys who do not stutter (n=11) and their fathers were investigated. No significant differences were found in comparisons of the two groups of fathers or of the two groups of children for any of the paralinguistic behaviors.…

The "fluency rules" therapy program for young children who stutter consists of seven rules designed to teach children about the physiologic concepts associated with fluent speech production. Pilot testing with nine children (three- to seven-years-old) demonstrated its effectiveness in producing fluent speech and maintaining fluency for a…

The paper argues that listeners are unable to judge unit-by-unit occurrences of stuttering acceptably. Reasons for this state of affairs and its implications for therapy, theory, and research are analyzed. An alternative speech production definition with its implications is proposed, and a diagnostic method of validating authentic stuttering is…