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)

Stutterers (N=201) and their nonstuttering same sex siblings were distributed identically in early, average, and late categories of language onset. Late talkers had significantly higher frequencies of articulation problems than did stutterers who were early or average talkers and their siblings. (Author/CL)

Shows how technological advances have made it possible for the disabled to compete with able bodied professionals in the job market. Cites the use of a metronome in the ear to control stuttering and the use of talking computers for the blind. (Availability: Superintendent of Documents, G.P.O., Washington, DC 20401) (JOW)

The times needed to initiate and terminate voicing in response to series of short segments of auditory signal were studied for 20 stuttering and 20 nonstuttering children (ages for both groups 5 to 12). The effects of random reward and nonreward on the phonatory response times also were studied. (Author/PHR)

Analysis of use of positron emission tomographic measurements of resting-state regional cerebral blood flow in 29 men, 10 of whom stuttered, did not support the idea that developmental stuttering is associated with abnormalities of blood flow at rest. Findings did suggest an essentially normal functional brain terrain with a small number of minor…

This commentary on EC 232 373 and EC 232 374 suggests that a theory that depends on categorizing events as either stuttering or nonstuttering must fail. It evaluates the merit of the voluntary/involuntary distinction in loss of speech production control, defends research on the nature of stuttering, and proposes additional research and theory.…

Electrodermal activity, peripheral blood flow, and heart rate were recorded from 19 adult stutterers and 19 normal speakers during performance of jaw movements. There were no differences between the two groups of speakers, suggesting that the stutterers did not have abnormally high levels of autonomic activation in speech. (Author/DB)

In this study, 102 adult stutterers were assessed on state and trait anxiety before, and on trait anxiety after, intensive behavioral treatment. Results showed that persons who stutter have significantly higher levels of fear (trait anxiety) in a demanding speech situation and also higher levels of chronic anxiety (trait anxiety) than matched…

The study comparing perceptual judgments of speech disfluency by 20 mothers of either stuttering or normally fluent children found no appreciable differences between groups in their judgments. Both groups of mothers most frequently judged sound/syllable repetitions to be stuttered, followed by whole-word repetitions and broken words. (Author/DB)