Beyond stuttering: Speech disfluencies in normally fluent French-speaking children at age 4

Abstract

The aim of this study is to establish normative data on the speech disfluencies of normally fluent French-speaking children at age four, an age at which stuttering has begun in 95% of children who stutter (Yairi & Ambrose, 2013). Fifty monolingual French-speaking children who do not stutter participated in the study. Analyses of a conversational speech sample comprising 250 to 550 words revealed an average of 10% total disfluencies, 2% stuttering-like disfluencies, and around 8% nonstuttered disfluencies. Possible explanations for these high speech disfluency frequencies are discussed, including explanations linked to French in particular. The results shed light on the importance of normative data specific to each language.

Speech disfluencies in typically developing Finnish-speaking children – preliminary results

“…Moreover, Wingate (1987) raised the question as to whether classification used to diagnose stuttering is appropriate for the classification of normal disfluency, and should, for example, communicative differences between cultures and languages be assessed to reach a real understanding of normal disfluencies. Moreover, Leclercq et al (2018) mentioned cultural and communicative differences. Even though these differences are not in the scope of the present study, the results such as ways of keeping turns by prolonging sounds between turns in communicative situations may be real findings on disfluencies in Finnish fluent speakers.…”

“…Disfluencies, however, are also present in the speech of individuals who are not stuttering. The past 50 years of research have produced information on the general features of the normal disfluencies mainly in the English language (e.g., Ambrose & Yairi, 1999;Pellowski & Conture, 2002;Tumanova et al, 2014;Wexler & Mysak, 1982;Yairi & Ambrose, 2005) but also in Dutch (Boey et al,2007;Eggers & Elen, 2018), French (Leclercq et al, 2018), German (Natke et al, 2006), and Spanish (Carlo & Watson, 2003;Watson & Anderson, 2001). A normative reference for fluent speech in children speaking Finnish, very different from the English language, does not exist.…”

“…There is some evidence that the child's age may have an effect on the frequency and type of disfluencies (Eggers & Elen, 2018;Watson & Anderson, 2001;Wexler, 1982;Wexler & Mysak, 1982;Yairi & Clifton, 1972). As shown in the overview of prior cross-sectional research in Table 1, Leclercq et al (2018) reported disfluency data for only one age level, whereas some cross-sectional studies have reported data for a single age range (Boey et al, 2007;Natke et al, 2006;Tumanova et al, 2014). Only a few studies reported findings for different age levels to define possible developmental differences across age groups (Ambrose & Yairi, 1999;Carlo & Watson, 2003;Haynes & Hood, 1977;Watson & Anderson, 2001;Wexler & Mysak, 1982; for details see Table 1).…”

“…This guideline of 3% seems to be applicable for various languages, including English, Dutch, Spanish and German (Ambrose & Yairi, 1999;Boey et al, 2007;Carlo & Watson, 2003;Natke et al, 2006;Pellowski & Conture, 2002;Tumanova et al, 2014). Recent findings, however, have shown that this guideline may not be used reliably in typically developing children speaking languages other than English (Leclercq et al, 2018). Moreover, a confounding factor is that in some studies a syllable-based metric (i.e.…”

“…three stuttered disfluencies per 100 syllables) (e.g., Ambrose & Yairi, 1999;Carlo & Watson, 2003), while in others a word-based metric, was used (i.e. three stuttered disfluencies per 100 words) (e.g., Boey et al, 2007;Leclercq et al, 2018).…”