Awareness of stuttering in Japanese children aged 3-7 years

Abstract

Background: Boey et al. (2009) devised a questionnaire for measuring children's awareness of stuttering and showed that even very young children were often aware of their stuttering. There has been no replication of studies using Boey et al.'s parent-reported questionnaire. The aim of this study was to test whether using Boey et al.'s seven questions, developed for a Dutch speaking population could be effective for measuring the awareness of stuttering in Japanese children.

Methods: Participants were 54 children who stutter (CWS) aged 3-7 years. Parents answered seven questions about their child's awareness of stuttering according to the questions developed Boey et al. RESULTS: Parental-reported observations of the child responses citing at least one awareness incident were 76%. The percentage of stuttering children with awareness of their own speech difficulties, according to chronological age, were as follows: 70% at age 3 years; 67% at age 4 years; 75% at age 5 years; 81% at age 6 years; and 90% at age 7 years.

Conclusions: We found that even at age 3 years, many CWS were already aware of their stuttering. The similarity of the data with the seminal study by Boey et al. suggests that the question-based assessment is reproducible even in a country with a different spoken language. The seven questions in Boey et al. are useful for evaluating whether children's awareness of stuttering could contribute to a clinical decision as well as stuttering severity.

Keywords: awareness; children who stutter; replication; speech fluency disorder.