The emergence of awareness of stuttering has been an important factor in theoretical and clinical considerations for early childhood stuttering. The present research program is aimed at studying the development of awareness of stuttering-like disfluency in normally fluent preschool and first-grade children using responses to video speech samples. A total of 79 children in five different age groups were asked to discriminate between the speech (fluent and disfluent) of two puppets, identify with the one who speaks like them, and evaluate the disfluent and fluent speech of the puppets. It was found that from age 3, children show evidence of awareness of the disfluency used in the study, but most children reached full awareness at age 5. Also, negative evaluation of disfluent speech is observed from age 4. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.

Traditional beliefs and attitudes of Black South Africans to stuttering were investigated. Four Indigenous Healers (IHs) from different ethnic groups were interviewed about their beliefs as to cause and management of stuttering, as well as the outcome of their treatment. The data reveals varying degrees of concern about stuttering. The traditional beliefs of cause and management of stuttering show some similarities to current beliefs held by speech pathologists. Implications in terms of the direction in therapy, cooperation with IHs and future research in this field are discussed.