title: Effect of utterance length and meaningfulness on the speech initiation times of children who stutter and children who do not stutter.
abstract: The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of utterance length and meaningfulness on the speech initiation times of children who stutter and children who do not stutter. Subjects were 36 elementary school students (half of whom stutter, matched by age, grade, and gender). Each child repeated short meaningful, long meaningful, and long nonce utterances in response to a visual cue. Nonstuttering, stuttering-only, and stuttering-plus (children with concomitant speech and/or language problems) children responded differently to utterance length and meaningfulness. This suggests that the three groups may process speech motor events for verbal responses differently.
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech-Language Pathology, Barrow Neurological Institute, St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center, Phoenix, AZ, USA.
authors.forename: W S
authors.initials: WS
authors.lastname: Maske-Cash
authors.forename: R F
authors.initials: RF
authors.lastname: Curlee
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011930:Reaction Time; D012660:Semantics; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D013060:Speech; D013342:Stuttering; D013997:Time Factors