A Preliminary Study for the Test of Covert Repair Hypothesis by the Analysis of Disfluencies during Spontaneous Utterance

Lee, Eun Ju; Sim, Hyun Sub

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2003;8(1): 201-216.

Eun Ju Lee^` , and Hyun Sub Sim^`

이은주(Eun Ju Lee)| 심현섭(Hyun Sub Sim)

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the present study was to test the Covert Repair Hypothesis by comparing disfluencies of PWS(people who stutter) and PWNS(people who do not stutter) in spontaneous utterances. The comparisons were carried out in light of (1) disfluency types, (2) repair types(covert vs. overt repair), and (3) strategy types(restart vs. post- ponement strategy). The results were as follows: (1)PWS showed significantly higher frequencies of both overall disfluencies and normal disfluencies than those of PWNS, (2) covert repairs were observed more in spontaneous utterances of PWS than PWNS, (3) interjections were the most frequent disfluency type in both PWS and PWNS. These results are discussed in terms of Covert Repair Hypothesis that claims disfluencies are the byproducts of covert repair processes.