The influence of the onset of phonation on the frequency of disfluency among children who stutter.
This study was designed to assess the effects of on-off voice adjustments on the frequency of stuttering in children. Essentially, this is a replication of the experimental paradigm used by Adams and Reis (1971, 1974) with adult stutterers who were asked to read two passages: one contained a normal distribution of voiced and voiceless sounds; the other contained nearly all voiced sounds. The latter passage was associated with less stuttering and more rapid adaptation. In this study, 15 childhood stutterers in the third through the seventh grades were asked to read these same two passages. Contrary to the previous results with adults, however, the children did not stutter less nor adapt more rapidly with the all-voiced passage. These results are discussed with reference to previous literature and to the influence of pausing.
D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007830:Larynx / Q000503:physiopathology; D008297:Male; D010699:Phonation; D011932:Reading; D013342:Stuttering / Q000503:physiopathology*; D014831:Voice