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Comment
. 2010 Oct;53(5):1260-1262.
doi: 10.1044/1092-4388(2010/10-0091).

Response to Howell's (2010) Commentary

Julie D Anderson  1
Affiliations
Comment

Response to Howell's (2010) Commentary

Julie D Anderson. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2010 Oct.

Abstract

Purpose: Findings from Anderson (2007) were broadly interpreted according to several psycholinguistic-oriented theories of stuttering, including EXPLAN (Howell, 2004). Although the study was not explicitly designed to test EXPLAN, it was generally concluded that the evidence does not provide appreciable support for EXPLAN. Howell (2010) objected to this conclusion on several grounds, claiming that the findings do, in fact, support EXPLAN. Anderson responds to Howell's objections in this letter.

Method: Background and perspective on the original study were presented. Howell's comments on EXPLAN's predictions concerning stuttering on "easy" and "difficult" words and the relationship between speech errors and stuttering are disputed in this reply to Howell's commentary.

Results: Howell's claims that the findings of Anderson support EXPLAN are largely refuted on the basis that (a) the data had not been analyzed by grammatical class and (b) there are no clear predictions regarding the association between variables affecting speech errors and stuttering in EXPLAN.

Conclusions: Howell's commentary seemingly represents an attempt to provide confirmatory evidence for EXPLAN using data that are simply not suitable for this purpose.

Keywords: EXPLAN; children; frequency; phonological neighborhood; stuttering.

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References

    1. Anderson JD (2007). Phonological neighborhood and word frequency effects in the stuttered disfluencies of children who stutter. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 50, 229–247. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Dell GS (1990). Effects of frequency and vocabulary type on phonological speech errors. Language and Cognitive Processes, 5, 313–349.
    1. German DJ, & Newman RS (2004). The impact of lexical factors on children’s word-finding errors. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 47, 624–636. - PubMed
    1. Howell P (2004). Assessment of some contemporary theories of stuttering that apply to spontaneous speech. Contemporary Issues in Communication Science and Disorders, 31, 122–139. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Howell P (2010). Phonological neighborhood and word frequency effects on the stuttered disfluencies of children who stutter: Comments on Anderson (2007). Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 53, 1256–1259. - PubMed

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