No abstract

The relationships between the length of the speech sample and the resulting disfluency data in 20 stuttering children who exhibited a wide range of disfluency levels were investigated. Specifically, the study examined whether the relative number of stuttering-like disfluencies (SLD) per 100 syllables, as well as the length of disfluencies (number of iterations per disfluent event), varied systematically across 4 consecutive, 300-syllable sections in the same speech sample. The difference in the number of SLD per 100 syllables between the early and later sections of the speech sample was statistically significant. In addition, the length of the speech sample had a critical influence on the identification of stuttering in children exhibiting relatively low levels of disfluency. Also, when a 20% difference in the number of SLD per 100 syllables was taken as a criterion, 50% of the children exhibited upward shifts in continuous speech samples that were longer than 300 syllables (i.e., 600, 900, and 1,200 syllables). Results indicated that, in general, group means for SLD grew larger as the sample size increased. The length of disfluent events did not significantly differ as the sample size increased; however, there were large differences for some children. Implications for clinicians and investigators are discussed.

This study evaluated (a) educational background, experience, and confidence among speech-language pathologists in providing services to transgender individuals and (b) awareness of transgender speech services among the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender population. Two anonymous surveys were sent to practicing speech-language pathologists and transgender participants in Illinois; 228 speech-language pathologists and 88 transgender participants responded. A majority of speech-language pathologists indicated that providing services to transgendered individuals was within their scope of practice but felt improperly prepared to provide assessment and treatment. Almost half of the transgender individuals were unaware of speech and language services to address their needs during transition.

Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate characteristics of four types of utterances in preschool children who stutter: perceptually fluent, containing normal disfluencies (OD utterance), containing stuttering-like disfluencies (SLD utterance), and containing both normal and stuttering-like disfluencies (SLD+OD utterance). Articulation rate and length of utterance were measured to seek the differences. Because articulation rate may reflect temporal aspects of speech motor control, it was predicted that the articulation rate would be different between perceptually fluent utterances and utterances containing disfluencies. The length of utterance was also expected to show different patterns. Method Participants were 14 preschool children who stutter. Disfluencies were identified from their spontaneous speech samples, and articulation rate in syllables per second and utterance length in syllables were measured for the four types of utterances. Results and discussion There was no significant difference in articulation rate between each type of utterance. Significantly longer utterances were found only in SLD+OD utterances compared to fluent utterances, suggesting that utterance length may be related to efforts in executing motor as well as linguistic planning. The SLD utterance revealed a significant negative correlation in that longer utterances tended to be slower in articulation rates. Longer utterances may place more demand on speech motor control due to more linguistic and/or grammatical features, resulting in stuttering-like disfluencies and a decreased rate.

Clusters are an integral part of disfluent speech in preschool children in general. Although they do not serve as indicators of recovery or persistency at the onset of stuttering, they may have some prognostic value several months later.