Stuttering on function words in bilingual children who stutter: A preliminary study.

Area of Science:

• Speech and Language Pathology
• Developmental Psychology
• Bilingualism Research

Background:

• Monolingual children who stutter (CWS) exhibit increased disfluency on function words.
• The initial word position is often associated with higher disfluency in CWS.
• Limited research exists on stuttering patterns in bilingual children.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if bilingual CWS exhibit the same disfluency pattern as monolingual CWS.
• To compare stuttering frequency on function versus content words in bilingual children.
• To explore language-specific effects on stuttering in bilingual speakers.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of narrative and conversational speech samples.
• Four bilingual Spanish- and English-speaking children who stutter participated.
• Comparison of disfluency rates on function and content words across languages.

Main Results:

• All bilingual participants showed significantly more stuttering on function words than content words in Spanish.
• Three of four participants exhibited more stuttering on function words in English narrative speech.
• Only one participant consistently showed more stuttering on function words in English conversational speech.

Conclusions:

• Bilingual CWS may exhibit language-specific patterns of disfluency.
• Linguistic planning and language proficiency may influence stuttering in bilingual children.
• Further research is needed to understand the complexities of stuttering in bilingual populations.