The Study on the Awareness of Disfluency in Preschool Children who Stutter and Normally Fluent Children

Min, Kyung Mi; Sim, Hyun Sub

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2003;8(2): 163-178.

Kyung Mi Min^` , and Hyun Sub Sim^`

민경미(Kyung Mi Min)| 심현섭(Hyun Sub Sim)

ABSTRACT

The present study investigated the differences in awareness of disfluency between normal and stuttering children. Nineteen preschool children who stutter and nineteen age-and sex-matched normally fluent children participated in the study. Each child was asked to view the video clip of a laptop computer. When the video clip was played, the two puppets appeared on the laptop monitor and spoke six pairs of sentences. Four pairs of sentences were presented by the puppets, one being fluent and the other, disfluent. After each presentation of the pair, the video clip paused and the child was asked the following questions: (1) Do the puppets talk in the same way [discrimination task]? and (2) Which puppet talks like you[self-identification task]? Following the four pairs of sentences, a new disfluent sentence was presented, and the child was asked to respond to the following question: (3) Is that talking good or not good[evaluation task]? The results of the study were as follows: (1) there was no significant difference between normal and stuttering children in discrimination response, (2) the self-identification by children who stutter were significantly lower than those of the normal children, and (3) there was no significant difference between normal and stuttering children in the evaluation responses. Moreover, it was found that the frequency of evaluation responses by older children(4- and 5-year-old children) was significantly higher than that of the 3-year-old children. Preschool stutterers and normally fluent children differed in their self-identification. To sum up, the self- identification was a useful variable to measure awareness of disfluency.