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Observational Study
. 2025 Jan 7;34(1):333-346.
doi: 10.1044/2024_AJSLP-24-00155. Epub 2024 Dec 17.

It's About Time: Parent-Child Turn-Taking in Early Stuttering

Allison Godsey  1 , Nan Bernstein Ratner  1
Affiliations
Observational Study

It's About Time: Parent-Child Turn-Taking in Early Stuttering

Allison Godsey et al. Am J Speech Lang Pathol. .

Abstract

Purpose: Most common treatments for stuttering offer advice that parents modify temporal features of conversational interaction to assist children who stutter (CWS). Advice includes but is not limited to slowing of adult speech, increasing turn-taking/response-time latencies (RTLs), and reducing interruptions. We looked specifically at RTL and parental speech rate in a longitudinal data set that included baseline behaviors.

Method: We used data from baseline recordings (CWNS = 13 CWS-persistent, 28 CWS-recovered, 21 children who did not stutter) of the Illinois International Stuttering Research Project at FluencyBank, using CLAN software with audio linkage to Praat.

Results: Group differences in speech rate and RTL at baseline were nonsignificant; parents of CWS-persistent spoke most slowly pre-advisement. No relationships between speech rate or RTL and child fluency were detected.

Conclusions: This is a retrospective, observational study, and caution must be used in interpreting our findings. However, current results do not add evidentiary support for common advice to adjust temporal parameters of their interactions made to parents of CWS, in terms of therapeutic outcome or concurrent fluency. We are analyzing subsequent samples, after advisement, to determine potential benefits of such guidance not evident in this analysis. Suggestions for future research and implications for clinical focus and practice are offered.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Mean parental response-time latency in seconds for each dyad. N = nonstuttering; P = persistent; R = recovered.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Linear regression plot of mean latency times (in seconds) and stutter like disfluency (SLD) of individual children who stutter.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Plot of standard deviation (SD) for mother's speech and fluency profile for children who stuffer (CWS) as measured using stutter like disfluency (SLD) score.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Maternal (MOT) and child (CHI) words per minute (WORD_MIN) for each group. N = nonstuttering; P = persistent; R = recovered.
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
Difference (DIF) in child (CHI) and mother (MOT) speech rate for each group. N = nonstuttering; P = persistent; R = recovered.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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