1)Yulia O. Filatova, 2)Dobrinka Georgieva
1)Moscow Pedagogical State University – Moscow (Russia)
2)South-West University “N. Rilski” – Blagoevgrad (Bulgaria)
Abstract. The purpose of the present study was to determine (i) the frequency of normal disfluency (ND) and stuttered disfluency (SD) in young children who stutter (CWS) and who do not stutter (CWNS) and (ii) whether SD serves as a risk factor for stuttering in CWNS. Participants were 30 preschool-age CWS (n = 14) and CWNS (n = 16). The speech (dis)fluency of all participants was measured from 100 words selected from samples of each child’s conversation and storytelling using the Vanderbilt University (Nashville, TN, USA) Disfluency Count Sheet. Results indicated that CWS, when compared to CWNS, significantly differed in stuttered but not in non-stuttered disfluencies. Within-group analysis indicated that CWS exhibited a significant relation between total speech disfluencies and an index of stuttering severity and that a relatively few CWNS (n = 4) exhibited a percentage of total and stuttered disfluencies within the lower ends of the distribution for CWS. Findings appear to suggest that inclusion of the Vanderbilt Disfluency Count Sheet as part of a comprehensive diagnostic assessment of childhood stuttering helps finetune such assessment through consideration of both ND and SD in a child’s speech as well as the ratio between these measures of disfluency.
Keywords: speech disfluency; normal disfluency (ND); stuttered dysfluency (SD); disfluency measures; preschool children; childhood stuttering; stuttering severity
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