First Advisor

Robert L. Casteel

Term of Graduation

Fall 1987

Date of Publication

11-18-1987

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (M.S.) in Speech Communication: Speech and Hearing Sciences

Department

Speech Communication

Language

English

Subjects

Stuttering in children -- Diagnosis, Speech disorders in children -- Diagnosis

DOI

10.15760/etd.5616

Physical Description

1 online resource (3, vi, 56 pages)

Abstract

The onset of stuttering usually occurs between two and six years which is the same time most children exhibit normal disfluencies often making it difficult to differentiate between normally disfluent children and incipient stutterers. Clinicians need information on the types and frequencies of disfluencies exhibited by normal preschool children in order to determine if a child is more likely to be an incipient stutterer or normally disfluent child. Some clinicians feel uncomfortable relying on past literature since there is a limited amount of information available and the studies have shown a considerable amount of variability in the types and frequencies of disfluencies demonstrated by children.

The SSI is an instrument that purports to determine the severity of stuttering, however, with preschool children it does not distinguish at its lower levels the normally disfluent child from the beginning stutterer. The chief problem with the instrument is that all children are labeled stutterers. In addition, no data on normal preschool children has been published.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the disfluency characteristics of normal 33-39 month old children in order to determine the differential role of the SSI with young children. The following questions were answered:

  1. What are the types and frequencies of disfluencies demonstrated by normal 33-39 month old children?
  2. How do the scores of normal 33-39 month old children distribute on the Stuttering Severity Instrument?

Twenty 33-39 month old normal children participated in the study. Means and standard deviations for the types of disfluencies and SSI scores were calculated for each child. The types and frequencies of disfluencies demonstrated tend to support past literature with whole-word repetitions, revision-incomplete phrases and interjections occurring the most frequently.

All of the children scored as very mild or mild stutterers on the SSI. The normal repetitions that caused children to score as stutterers were primarily whole-word repetitions of one syllable and part-word repetitions. None of the normally disfluent children demonstrated physical concomitants or durations longer than a fleeting moment. This appears to indicate treatment should be considered for children scoring above mild on the SSI or demonstrating dysrhythmic phonations, tense pauses, physical concomitants and druations longer than a fleeting moment.

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Comments

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Speech Communication: with emphasis in Speech-Language Pathology.

If you are the rightful copyright holder of this dissertation or thesis and wish to have it removed from the Open Access Collection, please submit a request to pdxscholar@pdx.edu and include clear identification of the work, preferably with URL.

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/21129

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