A new method to sample stuttering in preschool children.
This study reports a new method for sampling the speech of preschool stuttering children outside the clinic environment. Twenty parents engaged their stuttering children in an everyday play activity in the home with a telephone handset nearby. A remotely located researcher telephoned the parent and recorded the play session with a phone-recording jack attached to a digital audio recorder at the remote location. The parent placed an audio recorder near the child for comparison purposes. Children as young as 2 years complied with the remote method of speech sampling. The quality of the remote recordings was superior to that of the in-home recordings. There was no difference in means or reliability of stutter-count measures made from the remote recordings compared with those made in-home. Advantages of the new method include: (1) cost efficiency of real-time measurement of percent syllables stuttered in naturalistic situations, (2) reduction of bias associated with parent-selected timing of home recordings, (3) standardization of speech sampling procedures, (4) improved parent compliance with sampling procedures, (5) clinician or researcher on-line control of the acoustic and linguistic quality of recordings, and (6) elimination of the need to lend equipment to parents for speech sampling.
O'Brian
Sue
S
Australian Stuttering Research Centre, The University of Sydney, Australia.
Jones
Mark
M
Pilowsky
Rachel
R
Onslow
Mark
M
Packman
Ann
A
Menzies
Ross
R
D000162:Acoustics / Q000295:instrumentation; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D006801:Humans; D010290:Parents; D010988:Play and Playthings; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013060:Speech; D013068:Speech Production Measurement / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D013342:Stuttering / Q000175:diagnosis*; D013689:Telephone