Until this time, few studies have examined differences in durational characteristics in words surrounding a moment of stuttering for untreated preschool children. It is important to determine whether or not untreated preschoolers' who stutter alter the duration of their speech when they stutter versus when they are fluent to determine what factors influence stuttering behaviors. The purpose of the present study was to examine the duration of words immediately before and after a stuttered word and the duration of the matched target word in the identical fluent utterance. The following questions were to be addressed: 1) Is there a significant durational difference between a word preceding a stuttered word and the duration of the same word in a corresponding fluent utterance? 2) Is there a significant durational difference between a word following a stuttered word and the duration of the same word in a corresponding fluent utterance? Three subjects between the ages of 4 years, 6 months and 6 years, 11 months who had never received treatment participated. Subjects were recorded using a delayed imitation task, elicited from 60 action pictures in the Patterned Elicited Syntax Test, (PEST} two times in succession with a five minute rest period between elicited utterances. Phrases and sentences containing a stuttered word and identical elicited fluent utterances were used for analysis. The duration of the following words in milliseconds (msec.) were calculated using the CSRE 4.2 software program: l} The duration of the word immediately preceding a stuttered event within the same utterance (BSTUT}. 2) The duration of the same word in the identical fluent utterance (BNSTUT). 3) The duration of the word immediately following a stuttered event within the same utterance (ASTUT) . 4) The duration of the same word in the identical fluent utterance (ANSTUT) . A total of 44 samples were obtained. A two tailed ttest was completed at the .05 confidence level to determine the significance between the BSTUT vs. BNSTUT and ASTUT vs. ANSTUT word pairs. Results did not find statistically significant differences.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:pdx.edu/oai:pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu:open_access_etds-6326 |
| Date | 01 October 1996 |
| Creators | Lilly, Gregory Keith |
| Publisher | PDXScholar |
| Source Sets | Portland State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Dissertations and Theses |
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