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Theorists have increasingly suggested that both speech-motor and linguistic factors are involved in the etiology of stuttering. This contention has been supported by findings that tend to indicate that youngsters who stutter have a slower speech rate and are less linguistically skilled than nonstutterers. However, no inferences can be drawn from these findings as to the nature or the causation of this disorder. This is because the aforementioned findings might be a result rather than a cause of the disorder. In order to clarify the directionality issue, a multi-year prospective study was undertaken that involved 93 preschool children with a parental history of stuttering.At the initial session, none of the high-risk children sampled was regarded as having a stuttering problem. One year later, 26 children were classified as stutterers. Statistical analyses revealed that prior to the onset of stuttering these children did not differ from the other youngsters studied with respect to either their receptive or expressive language abilities. However, their rate of articulation was significantly faster. The latter finding is taken to mean that the children who developed stuttering were not limited in speechmotor ability. Rather, their fluency failures are seen as a result of a relatively high articulation rate. It is noteworthy, in this regard, that the rate of the high-risk children who continued to be viewed as nonstutterers was slower than that previously reported for youngsters of their age. This suggests that the slower rate served as a buffer against fluency breakdown.

The aim of this study was to determine if mothers display identifiably different communicative styles in their interaction with their normally developing two- to five-year-old children. In order to investigate this issue an extensive coding system was developed, which assessed the structural organization and the communicative function of the speech of 71 mothers as they interacted with their children. By means of factor analysis three maternal communicative styles were distinguished: non-intervening, explaining and directing. In the non-intervening style there is no direct pressure from the mother on the child to respond verbally. The explaining mother is primarily concerned with providing information to her child in a way that gives the child little opportunity to take the speaking turn. The directing mother is mainly engaged in directing the child's behaviour by means of verbal control. The internal consistency of the three communicative styles appeared to be both satisfactory and related to relevant child and mother features.