Reading Fluency in Children and Adolescents Who Stutter.

Area of Science:

• Speech and Language Pathology
• Developmental Psychology
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Speech fluency is a significant challenge for young people who stutter, especially during reading aloud.
• Reading aloud requires complex skills including text decoding, articulation, and prosodic performance.
• Prosodic phrasing, the segmentation of text into meaningful units with appropriate pauses, is crucial for fluent reading.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate reading fluency (decoding, articulation rate, prosodic phrasing) in children and adolescents who stutter.
• To compare reading fluency in stuttering and non-stuttering youth across different age groups.
• To identify potential developmental alterations in reading fluency associated with stuttering.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of read speech from 52 children and adolescents (9-17 years) who stutter and matched controls.
• Assessment of reading accuracy, articulation rate, pause duration, and prosodic phrasing.
• Examination of the relationship between disfluencies, articulation rate, prosodic boundaries, and age.

Main Results:

• No significant differences in reading accuracy or articulation rate between stuttering and non-stuttering groups.
• Children who stutter produced shorter pauses and more major prosodic phrases than controls.
• Adolescents who stutter showed more intermediate phrases than stuttering adolescents; all stuttering participants had more breath pauses.
• Disfluencies correlated with slower articulation rates and increased prosodic boundaries.

Conclusions:

• Children and adolescents who stutter exhibit distinct patterns in prosodic phrasing and pause usage during reading.
• Developmental changes in reading fluency measures are evident in stuttering youth.
• The study provides evidence for altered reading fluency and developmental stages in prosodic phrasing in individuals who stutter.