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Related Experiment Videos

Phonetic difficulty and stuttering in English.

Peter Howell1, James Au-Yeung, J Scott Yaruss

  • 1Department of Psychology, University College London, Gower St., London, UK. p.howell@ucl.ac.uk

Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics
|March 9, 2007
PubMed
Summary

Phonetic complexity impacts stuttering in older adults, particularly on content words. This study validates a new phonetic complexity index and identifies key factors contributing to stuttering.

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Area of Science:

  • Speech and Language Pathology
  • Linguistics
  • Developmental Psychology

Background:

  • Previous research indicates phonetic difficulty disproportionately affects older stuttering speakers, especially on content words.
  • Older speakers who stutter show greater difficulty with content words compared to function words.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To examine the relationship between stuttering rate and the Index of Phonetic Complexity (IPC) in different age groups.
  • To validate the IPC as a measure of phonetic difficulty in stuttering.
  • To identify and rank the factors contributing to stuttering in English.

Main Methods:

  • The study analyzed stuttering rate against the IPC score across function and content words in three age groups (6-11, 11-18, 18+).
  • Phonetic complexity was assessed using the IPC, a recently developed index.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Further analyses identified and ordered factors influencing stuttering in English.

    • Main Results:

    • The hypothesis that stuttering rate on content words correlates with IPC scores in older speakers was supported.
    • The IPC's validity was supported by its similarity to previous analyses of phonetic features.
    • The order of importance for factors leading to stuttering was identified as: consonant manner, consonant place, word length, and consonant clusters.

    Conclusions:

    • Phonetic difficulty, measured by IPC, significantly relates to stuttering in older individuals.
    • The findings suggest some factors influencing stuttering may be acquired rather than innate, warranting cross-linguistic research.
    • Early childhood disfluency on function words appears influenced by factors beyond phonetic complexity.