Fluency of conversational speech in children with unilateral brain lesions

The spontaneous conversational speech of 20 children with unilateral left hemisphere lesions and 13 with right lesions was compared to normally developing peers matched by age, sex, race, and social class for instances of stuttering type nonfluencies, normal nonfluencies, and rate of speech. Both left and right lesioned children provided quantitatively more and qualitatively different patterns of nonfluencies than their neurologically normal peers. Left and right lesioned children produced more stuttering types of nonfluencies than their controls, but neither lesioned group produced a greater number of normal nonfluencies than controls. Left lesioned children also had a slower rate of speech as measured by number of syllables per second during either stuttered or fluent speech. Considerable variability was observed among lesioned children. Implications for neurogenic theories of developmental fluency disorders are discussed.