Childhood stuttering and dissociations across linguistic domains: a replication and extension

Abstract

The purpose of this investigation was to replicate the methods of Anderson, Pellowski, and Conture (2005) to determine whether a different sample of preschool children who stutter (CWS) exhibit more dissociations in speech-language abilities than children who do not stutter (CWNS; Study 1) and to examine the relation between dissociations and specific characteristics of stuttering (e.g., most common disfluency type) using a much larger sample size (Study 2). Participants for Study 1 were 40 CWS and 40 CWNS between the ages of 3;0 and 5;11. Participants for Study 2 were the same as for Study 1 plus the 45 CWS and 45 CWNS used by Anderson et al. (2005) for a total of 85 CWS and 85 CWNS. Participants were administered five standardized speech-language (sub)tests and a conversational speech sample was obtained from each participant for the analyses of speech disfluencies/stuttering. Standard scores from the standardized speech-language tests were analyzed using a correlation-based statistical procedure (Bates, Applebaum, Sacedo, Saygin, & Pizzamiglio, 2003) to identify possible dissociations among the speech-language measures. Findings from Study 1 supported Anderson et al.'s findings that CWS exhibited significantly more speech-language dissociations than CWNS. Results from Study 2 further revealed that CWS who exhibited dissociations were more likely to exhibit non-stuttered (other) disfluencies as their most common disfluency type. Findings provide further support for the possibility that dissociations among various aspects of the speech-language system may contribute to the difficulties that some children have establishing normally fluent speech.

Educational objectives: The reader will be able to: (a) summarize findings from previous studies examining the speech and language performance of children who do and do not stutter; (b) describe the concept of "dissociations" in the speech and language skills of young children; (c) compare the results of the present study with previous work in this area; and (d) discuss speculations concerning the manner in which dissociations might affect fluency development in children who stutter.

Figure 1

Study 1. Example of a correlation between receptive (PPVT-III) and expressive (EVT) vocabulary for children between the ages of 3;0 and 5;11 (years; months) who do (CWS; N = 40) and do not stutter (CWNS; N = 40) with density ellipse (CI=95%) shown.

Figure 2

Study 1. Mean (standard error of the mean) standard scores on standardized speech-language measures (TELD-3 Expressive and Receptive subtests, PPVT-III, EVT, and GFTA-2) for children who do (CWS; n = 40) and do not (CWNS; n = 40) stutter.

Figure 3

Study 2. Mean (standard error of the mean) standard scores on standardized speech-language measures (TELD-3 Expressive and Receptive subtests, PPVT-III, EVT, and GFTA-2) for children who do (CWS; n = 85) and do not (CWNS; n = 85) stutter.

Figure 4

Study 2. Mean (standard error of the mean) standard scores on standardized speech-language measures (TELD-3 Expressive and Receptive subtests, PPVT-III, EVT, and GFTA-2) for comparable groups of children who stutter who do (CWS-D; n = 24) and do not (CWS-ND; n = 24) exhibit dissociations across speech-language domains.