title: Past tense marking in the spontaneous speech of preschool children who do and do not stutter.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The aim of this study was to identify whether different patterns of errors exist in irregular past-tense verbs in children who stutter (CWS) and children who do not stutter (CWNS).
  
  
  METHODS
  Spontaneous language samples of thirty-one age- and gender-matched pairs of children (total N=62) between the ages of 24 months and 59 months were analyzed.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Results indicated that children who do and do not stutter over-regularize irregular past-tense verbs (i.e., saying runned for ran) with comparable frequency. However, two nonsignificant trends which suggest possible intra-group differences were noted. First, irregular past tense verbs represented a greater portion of total verbs for CWS than for CWNS. Second, CWS appeared to double-mark (i.e., say ranned for ran) more often than CWNS. Results are discussed in light of theories about the acquisition of the irregular past-tense and about differences in language skills between CWS and CWNS.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  After reading this article, the reader will be able to: (a) summarize previous findings about connections between stuttering and language in CWS and CWNS; (b) describe similarities and differences between irregular past-tense verb use and errors in CWS and CWNS; (c) discuss possible connections between the declarative-procedural model and stuttering.
authors.affiliation: Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, University of Maryland-College Park, MD 20742, United States.
authors.forename: Jessica
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Bauman
authors.forename: Nancy E
authors.initials: NE
authors.lastname: Hall
authors.forename: Stacy A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Wagovich
authors.forename: Christine M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Weber-Fox
authors.forename: Nan Bernstein
authors.initials: NB
authors.lastname: Ratner
mesh_terms: D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D013060:Speech; D013342:Stuttering / Q000523:psychology*