Nonword repetition ability of children who do and do not stutter and covert repair hypothesis.
BACKGROUND
Stuttering has a life span incidence and it significantly impacts academic, social, emotional and vocational achievements of patients who stutter.


OBJECTIVE
The purpose of the present study was to examine phonological encoding in young children who stutter (CWS) during a non word repetition task and to test the covert repair hypothesis (CRH) and phonological skills in Persian native children.


METHODS
The study was conducted among 12 CWS and 12 children who do not stutter (CWNS) between the ages of 5.1 and 7.10 at the rehabilitation clinics in Tehran.


METHODS
A list of 40 bisyllabic and trisyllabic nonwords was used in a nonword repetition task to collect information about the following dependent variables: (a) reaction times (RTs), (b) the number of phonological errors (PEs) and (c) nonword length.


METHODS
An independent sample T-test was performed to compare means of PEs and RTs between the two groups and a paired t-test for analysis of nonword length impacts.


RESULTS
Results indicated that the CWS had a slightly poor performance than CWNS but there was no significant difference between the groups. Also, the differences between bisyllabic and trisyllabic nonwords were significant for phonological errors but not for reaction times.


CONCLUSIONS
In general, it is concluded that CWS might not have a gross problem in phonological retrieval of the novel phonological context even with increase in syllable length. Also, some predictions of CRH were not supported by this research. However, further research into this possibility may shed light on the emergence and characteristics of childhood stuttering.
Bakhtiar
Mehdi
M
Department of Speech Therapy, Faculty of Paramedicine, Zahedan University of Medical Sciences, Zahedan, Iran. mbakhtiar@zdmu.ac.ir
Abad
Ali Dehqan Ahmad
AD
Panahi
Mohammad Sadegh Seif
MS
D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007492:Iran; D008297:Male; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011930:Reaction Time; D013060:Speech / Q000502:physiology*; D013064:Speech Disorders; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D013342:Stuttering / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology