Young children between the ages of two and six years often exhibit partword, whole word. and phrases repetitions as their language develops. This is also the age range when stutterertng most frequently appears. Consequently. speech-language pathologists need diagnostic criteria and evaluation tools to distinguish between the incipient stutterer and the normally disfluent child. Today a widely used evaluation tool is the Stuttering Severity Instrument (SSI) (Riley, 1972, 1980). The SSI is designed to provide a severity level based upon the parameters of frequency. duration. and physical concomitants. Riley (1972) first designed the SSI to not include monosyllabic word repetitions in the frequency count: however. he revised the SSI in 1980 to include monosyllabic word repetitions without providing new normative data nor standardization. It was questionable as to whether the SSI was a sufficiently sensitive means to determine stuttering severity for young children and to whether or not it was strengthened or weakened by the addition of whole monosyllabic words.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the disfluency characteristics of normal 33-39 month old children in order to determine the differential role of the SSI with young children. The following questions were answered: 1. What are the types and frequencies of disfluencies demonstrated by normal 33-39 month old children? 2. How do the scores of normal 33-39 month old children distribute on the Stuttering Severity Instrument?

Speech-language pathologists are in need of useful assessment instruments which differentiate early stuttering behaviors and will enable them to identify preschool children who need immediate intervention for stuttering. Furthermore, useful assessment tools are needed especially due to the variability across studies of normal disfluency and lack of reliability information on more formal measures of differential evaluation of normal disfluency and incipient stuttering.