This study examined speech disfluency clusters in the speech of 60 3- to 6-year-old children, half of whom stuttered. Results indicated that the children who stuttered produced significantly more "stuttering-stuttering" clusters and significantly more "stuttering-repair" clusters, whereas nonstutterers never produced "stuttering-stuttering"…

Features associated with the production of linguistic prosody were investigated in seven young speech-disordered children and seven young children with age-appropriate speech abilities. The primary differences between groups were in time characteristics of imitated responses. Results are discussed in terms of physiologic and/or linguistic…

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…

Two studies examined the ability of typically developing children and children with phonological disorders to discriminate consonant-vowel- consonant words that differ only in the final consonant in whole word and gated conditions. Results suggest there is a complex relationship among word learning skills, ability to attend to fine phonetic…

This study evaluated the language abilities of 15 young children with early stuttering symptoms and parents' views of the children's communicative development. Results indicated generally depressed performance on all child speech and language measures by the children who stutter. Parent report was closely attuned to measured child performance.…

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…

Children (ages 5-7, N=31) with expressive phonological impairments were tested on phonological awareness and compared with control children. Children with phonological impairments scored well below controls on phonological awareness and literacy, independent of other language problems. Results suggest that both speech impairment and literacy…

Comparison of the speech fluency and phonology of 18 boys (mean age 61 months) who stuttered and demonstrated either normal or disordered phonology found that the two groups were generally similar in terms of their basic speech disfluency, nonsystematic speech error, and self-repair behaviors. Predictions of the covert repair hypothesis of…

This study attempted to quantify diagnostic characteristics related to consonant production of developmental verbal dyspraxia (DVD) in 11 Dutch children (ages 6 and 7). The study was able to quantify diagnostic characteristics but found very few qualitative differences in error patterns between children with DVD and 11 age-matched children with…

This study used survival analysis to overcome problems of principled generalization and individual variability in analysis of the conversational speech of 24 children with speech delay recorded over two years. The derived normalization probabilities were lagged according to the strong delay hypothesis and results converged with previous normative…

Probable ages of normalization were calculated for 24 children with speech delay, using Kaplan-Meier analysis. Formulas are provided that permit calculation of the likelihood that individual children will normalize by a given age. Analysis revealed two different paths to normalization with children following one of the paths likely to retain…

This case study of a 5-year-old boy diagnosed with a specific expressive language impairment with verbal apraxia reports on chromosomal, neurological, speech/language, cognitive, and play evaluations. Evaluation found a chromosomal translocation and a severe expressive speech-language deficit but good nonverbal cognitive and communicative skills.…