Nonword repetition and identification skills in Kannada speaking school-aged children who do and do not stutter

The present study employed nonword repetition and nonword identification tasks to explore the phonological working memory (PWM) abilities and its interaction with speech motor control in school-aged children who do and do not stutter.

Participants were 17 children who stutter (CWS) (Age range = 7-12) and 17 age and gender-matched children who do not stutter (CWNS). For the nonword repetition task, the participants repeated sets of 2-, 3-, and 4-syllable nonwords (n = 12 per set). The participants silently identified a target nonword from a subsequent set of three nonwords (n = 12 per 2-, 3- and 4-syllable length) for the nonword identification task. The performance of CWS on the nonword repetition task was compared with the CWNS for the mean number of accurate repetitions, number of trials taken, number of accurate repetitions on initial trial, and number of fluent repetitions across the three-syllable conditions for the tasks. For the nonword identification task, the number of nonwords identified accurately by the two groups were subjected to analysis.

CWS were significantly less accurate on the initial production of nonwords and required significantly more number of attempts to repeat the nonword accurately. Further for the nonword identification task, CWS were significantly less accurate than CWNS in correctly identifying the target nonword.

The present findings suggest that, in addition to limitations in PWM capacity, an unstable speech motor control system in CWS may lead to dysfluent speech.