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Speech disfluency in school-age children's conversational and narrative discourse
Courtney T Byrd1, Kenneth J Logan, Ronald B Gillam
1The University of Texas, Austin, USA. courtneybyrd@mail.utexas.edu
Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools
|January 25, 2012
Summary
Narration tasks elicit more stuttering-like disfluencies in children who stutter (CWS) than conversation. This suggests narration is an effective method for assessing stuttering in children.
Area of Science:
- Speech-language pathology
- Childhood communication disorders
Background:
- Assessing children who stutter (CWS) requires understanding speech disfluency patterns.
- Standard diagnostic contexts include conversation and narration.
Purpose of the Study:
- Compare speech fluency in CWS and children who do not stutter (CWNS) across conversational and narrative contexts.
- Investigate the impact of age on discourse task performance in children's fluency assessment.
Main Methods:
- 44 school-age children were divided into younger/older and CWS/CWNS groups.
- Participants engaged in picture-based conversation and narration tasks.
Main Results:
- CWS exhibited more stuttering-like disfluencies during narration than conversation.
- Younger children showed more typical disfluencies in conversation than older children.
- Age did not influence the frequency of stuttering-like disfluencies in either context.
Conclusions:
- Narration effectively elicits stuttering-like disfluencies in CWS.
- Consider narrative samples alongside conversational samples for comprehensive stuttering assessment in children.
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