Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the verbal short-term memory skills of children who stutter (CWS) and children who do not stutter (CWNS) in 2 experiments, focusing on the influence of phonological and semantic similarity. Method: Participants were 42 CWS and 42 CWNS between the ages of 3;0 and 5;11 (years;months). In Experiment…

Purpose: To investigate the holistic versus incremental phonological encoding processes of young children who stutter (CWS; N = 26) and age- and gender-matched children who do not stutter (CWNS; N = 26) via a picture-naming auditory priming paradigm. Method: Children named pictures during 3 auditory priming conditions: neutral, holistic, and…

The purpose of this study was to assess the nonword repetition skills of 24 children who do (CWS; n=12) and do not stutter (CWNS; n=12) between the ages of 3;0 and 5;2. Findings revealed that CWS produced significantly fewer correct two- and three-syllable nonword repetitions and made significantly more phoneme errors on three-syllable nonwords…

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…

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…

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…

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 is one of few professional books that addresses the subject of stuttering in young children. This is surprising considering that most cases of stuttering begin in the preschool years and that the prevalence of the disorder in very young children is higher than in any other age group. This excellent and informative text is written for…

The purpose of this study was to assess the influence of phonological priming on the speech reaction time (SRT) of children who do (CWS) and who do not (CWNS) stutter during a picture-naming task. Participants were eighteen 3-5-year-old CWS (M = 50.67 months, SD= 11.83 months), matched in age and gender with 18 CWNS (M = 49.44 months, SD = 10.22…