Effects of the syntactic complexity on speech dysfluency of stuttering Persian-speaking children and adults in conversational speech
Abstract
Background and Aim: Recently, researchers have increasingly turned to study the relation between stuttering and syntactic complexity. This study investigates the effect of syntactic complexity on the amount of speech dysfluency in stuttering Persian-speaking children and adults in conversational speech. The obtained results can pave the way to a better understanding of stuttering in children and adults, and finding more appropriate treatments.
Methods: In this cross-sectional study, the participants were 15 stuttering adult Persian-speakers, older than 15 years, and 15 stuttering child Persian-speakers of 4-6 years of age. In this study, first a 30 minute sample of the spontaneous speech of the participants was provided. Then the utterances of each person were studied in respect to the amount of dysfluency and syntactic complexity. The obtained information was analyzed using paired samples t-test.
Results: In both groups of stuttering children and adults, there was a significant difference between the amount of dysfluency of simple and complex sentences (p<0.05).
Conclusion: The results of this study showed that an increase in syntactic complexity in conversational speech, increased the amount of dysfluency in stuttering children and adults. Moreover, as a result of increase of syntactic complexity, dysfluency had a greater increase in stuttering children than stuttering adults.
2. Sawyer J, Chon H, Ambrose NG. Influences of rate, length, and complexity on speech disfluency in a single-speech sample in preschool children who stutter. J Fluency Disord. 2008;33(3):220-40.
3. Tornick GB, Bloodstein O. Stuttering and sentence length. J Speech Hear Res. 1976;19(4):651-4.
4. Logan KJ. Language and fluency characteristics of preschoolers' multiple-utterance conversational turns. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2003;46(1):178-88.
5. Logan KJ, Conture EG. Length, grammatical complexity, and rate differences in stuttered and fluent conversational utterances of children who stutter. J Fluency Disord. 1995;20(1):35-61.
6. Haresabadi F, Puladi Sh, Mahmoudi Bakhtiyari B, Kamali M. Effect evaluation of utterance length on speech dysfluency in stuttering and nonstuttering Persian-speaker children. Audiol. 2010;19(1):86-93. Persian.
7. Lees R, Anderson H, Martin P. The influence of language disorder on fluency. J Fluency Disord. 1999;24(3):227-38.
8. Silverman SW, Ratner NB. Syntactic complexity, fluency, and accuracy of sentence imitation in adolescents. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 1997;40(1):95-106.
9. Kleinow J, Smith A. Influences of length and syntactic complexity on the speech motor stability of the fluent speech of adults who stutter. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2000;43(2):548-59.
10. Guitar B. Stuttering: an integrated approach to its nature and treatment. 3rd ed. Baltimore: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; 2006.
11. Contour EG. Stuttering: its nature, diagnosis, and treatment. 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall; 1990.
12. Zackheim CT, Conture EG. Childhood stuttering and speech disfluencies in relation to children's mean length of utterance: a preliminary study. J Fluency Disord. 2003;28(2):115-41.
13. Buhr A, Zebrowski P. Sentence position and syntactic complexity of stuttering in early childhood: a longitudinal study. J Fluency Disord. 2009;34(3):155-72.
14. Richels C, Buhr A, Conture E, Ntourou K. Utterance complexity and stuttering on function words in preschool-age children who stutter. J Fluency Disord. 2010;35(3):314-31.
15. Gordon PA, Luper HL. Speech disfluencies in nonstutterers: syntactic complexity and production task effects. J Fluency Disord. 1989;14(6):429-45.
16. Logan KJ. The effect of syntactic structure upon speech initiation times of stuttering and nonstuttering speakers. J Fluency Disord. 2003;28(1):17-35.
Issue | Vol 21 No 3 (2012) | |
Section | Research Article(s) | |
Keywords | ||
Stuttering children adults conversational speech syntactic complexity |
Rights and permissions | |
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. |