Expressive language growth among young children who do and do not stutter

Area of Science:

• Speech and Language Pathology
• Developmental Psychology
• Linguistics

Background:

• Previous research on language development in children who stutter (CWS) compared to non-stuttering peers (CWNS) shows inconsistent findings.
• Few studies have longitudinally analyzed spontaneous speech in both groups.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine expressive language development by analyzing growth in syntactic complexity in CWS and CWNS.
• To explore the links between syntactic complexity growth, stuttering recovery/persistence, and stuttering severity.

Main Methods:

• Collected annual conversational speech samples over 3-4 years from 100 CWS and 85 CWNS (aged 3-5 years at baseline).
• Analyzed speech samples using the Index of Productive Syntax (IPSyn).
• Used hierarchical linear regression and Empirical Bayes' methods to assess group differences and growth trajectories.

Main Results:

• Both CWS and CWNS demonstrated similar growth in syntactic complexity.
• No significant difference in syntactic complexity growth was found between children who recovered from stuttering and those who persisted.
• Among recovered CWS, higher expressive syntax complexity was associated with lower stuttering severity.
• CWS tended to score lower on the IPSyn Verb Phrase subscale compared to CWNS.

Conclusions:

• Expressive syntactic complexity development did not differentiate CWS from CWNS or predict recovery from stuttering.
• In recovered children, greater expressive syntax scores were linked to reduced stuttering severity.
• Mature language ability may play a protective role in stuttering recovery.