Speech disfluencies in nonstutterers Syntactic complexity and production task effects

The differences in the number of disfluencies of 3-, 5-, and 7-year-old nonstuttering children were investigated as syntactic complexity was varied in three different syntactic constructions: 1) simple affirmative declarative with copula + ing (SAAD), 2) future (FUT), and 3) passive (PAS) within a sentence imitation and a sentence-modeling task. The subjects repeated 30 sentences from the imitation task stimuli and produced response constructions from 30 pictures from the modeling task stimuli. The 3-year-olds exhibited significantly more disfluencies than the 5-year-olds, and the 5-year-olds produced significantly more disfluencies than the 7-year-olds. All three age groups produced significantly more disfluencies on the modeling task than on the imitation task. A significant complexity effect was demonstrated for the PAS construction. Results are compared to previous research findings and discussed with reference to hypothesized linguistic complexity and task difficulty.     

Clustering of disfluency in nonstuttering childrens' early utterances

The clustering of disfluency within early utterances in the speech of four nonstuttering children was examined. During the developmental period their mean length of utterance was between 2.25 and 3.0 morphemes. The frequency and characteristics of the clustered disfluencies are described and compared with single disfluent moments. Clusters of two disfluencies were analyzed for interactive effects of positional preference and type. Results were similar to those found in older preschool nonstuttering speakers, demonstrating the normal developmental nature of clustering in early sentences. Implications for using this temporal measure to differentially diagnose normal from abnormal disfluency are discussed.     

Pupil responses to grammatical complexity of sentences

Measurements of pupil size were taken of nine subjects while they listened to sentences of various length, construction, and content, with the instruction to rate them for comprehensibility. Twenty-one sentence types were rated. Each was assigned, via a transformational grammar, a value of grammatical complexity. Mean pupil dilation during listening as an index of psychological complexity was found to correlate more strongly with grammatical complexity than did subject ratings of sentence comprehensibility. These findings suggest that the pupil may have considerable use as an “on-line” monitor of cognitive load imposed by grammatical complexity of sentences.     

Child judgments of sentences varying in grammatical complexity

This study is another contribution to the development of a satisfactory child version of the linguistic task of judging grammaticality. With a nondifferentially reinforced forced-choice procedure, it was found that responses of 24 5- and 24 7-yr-old children did vary as a function of the grammatical complexity of stimulus sentences. The children judged sentence stimuli of two types (negatives and wh-word questions) each having three levels of grammatical complexity (two primitive and one well-formed). After each stimulus presentation, the subject pointed to the adult or the child in a photograph, depending on who was judged to have produced that utterance. Performance of the two age groups did not differ for the question stimuli, for which subjects pointed to the adult more frequently as the grammatical complexity of wh-word questions increased. In response to the negative sentences, the older group attributed more well-formed stimuli to the adult than primitive ones. While the younger group pointed to the adult more frequently for well-formed negatives than for the middle level negatives, they made more adult responses than expected to the least complex negatives. It was concluded that, with this procedure, 5- and 7-yr-olds demonstrate ability to distinguish grammatically well-formed from primitive sentences. Procedural improvements for future research may allow children this age and younger to demonstrate more adult-like discrimination between a variety of primitive and well-formed sentences.     

Click location in sentences: A test of the linguistic competence of seven-year-old fluent and disfluent males

Ten fluent and ten disfluent 7-yr-old males were presented simple and complex fully grammatical, anomalous and scrambled sentences. A click (35-msec 1-kHz tone burst) had been superimposed within three positions to the right or left of the major syntactic boundary in each sentence. The subjects heard the sentence, repeated the sentence, and marked on a preprinted version of the sentence where they heard the click. It was expected that children with greater language facility would more probably locate the click veridically. By the same reasoning, less complex syntactic structures should be expected to influence click placement less than more complex utterances. The following results were obtained: (a) the disfluent group gave a greater number of correct responses than the fluent group; (b) more correct responses were observed for simple sentences than for complex sentences for both groups; and (c) fewer correct responses were observed for both simple and complex grammatical sentences than for anomalous and scrambled sentence types.     

A comparative study of speech disfluencies in nonstuttering black and white college athletes

Speech samples elicited from nonstuttering black subjects and from nonstuttering white subjects were compared for degree and nature of disfluencies. Ninety-two male college athletes were screened in the areas of articulation, voice, fluency, and hearing. A 100-word conversational speech sample and a 200-word reading sample were elicited from subjects who passed the screening (28 black athletes and 29 white athletes). Both the spontaneous speech samples and the reading samples were rated for disfluency by three clinically certified speech-language pathologists. The black subjects exhibited significantly more total disfluencies in reading than did the white subjects; in terms of disfluency differences by type, the black subjects displayed significantly more word and phrase repititions. No significant differences were found between the subject groups for total disfluencies in conversation, although the white subjects did display significantly more hesitations. Grammatically, both subject groups were most disfluent on pronouns, nouns, adverbs, verbs, and adjectives, consistent with research findings on the loci of speech disfluencies.     

不同母语类型留学生表达汉语句子的比较

以汉语句式为测试材料,研究留学生母语是否影响他们习得汉语的问题。结果发现,留学生在主动宾句、主谓谓语句/领属句、主谓谓语句（受事主语句）和“把”字句2上的成绩表现出与其母语类型相关的规律性,母语是英语的留学生与母语是日语和韩语的留学生有显著差异。与母语语法规则接近的汉语句式较易掌握,反之就较难。这一结果提示,母语语法影响留学生习得汉语语法,在初等汉语水平阶段需要按授课对象的母语类型组织教学。     

Elementary school-aged stutterers' disfluencies during oral reading and spontaneous speech

This study assessed the effect of increasing the difficulty of reading material on the frequency and type of disfluency in elementary school stutterers, and determined the relationship between the amount and type of disfluencies exhibited during oral reading and spontaneous speech. Forty children participated: 10 children each from grades three, four, five, and six read five 200-word reading passages, corresponding to one grade level below school placement, the grade equivalent to school placement, and one, two, and three grades above school placement. Two-hundred-word spontaneous speech samples were also elicited and analyzed. Results indicated a significant increase in total molar disfluencies, total molecular behaviors, and seven out of the eight specific disfluency patterns examined, as the difficulty of the reading material increased. Reading levels I and II best predicted disfluencies during spontaneous speech. Results are discussed with respect to theoretical and clinical implications.     

The role of inhibition in the production of disfluencies

Disfluency is a common occurrence in speech and is generally thought to be related to difficulty in the production system. One unexplored issue is the extent to which inhibition is required to prevent incorrect speech plans from being articulated. Therefore, we examined disfluency production in participants with attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which is linked to deficits in inhibitory function and response suppression (Nigg, 2001). Participants completed a sentence production task in which they were presented with two pictures and a verb and their task was to produce a sentence. If inhibition plays a role in preventing incorrect speech plans, we would expect ADHD participants to produce more repetition and repair disfluencies than would non-ADHD controls. The results showed that one subtype of ADHD (i.e., the combined) produced more repair disfluencies as task demands increased. We conclude that the production system relies on inhibitory control in order to prevent errors in language production.     

Syntactic influences on stuttering in young child stutterers

This study examined the location and rate of stuttering in the spontaneous speech of nine young stutterers (4.0–6.6 yr) in relation to certain aspects of syntax. It was designed to answer the following questions: Is there more stuttering at clause onset (boundary) than at other points in the clause? Does the type of clause influence rate of stuttering? Is there more stuttering on complex than on simple sentences? The syntactic analysis defined 10 clause types (seven pertaining to complex sentences and three pertaining to simple sentences); clause boundaries (taking into account “filler” words occuring in such positions); and hierarchical constituent structure within sentences. Stuttering was found with significantly greater frequency at clause boundaries than at internal (nonboundary) positions of clauses. This was apparent for nine of the 10 clause types, the exception being complement clauses. The word “and” at the beginning of simple and complex sentences provoked a high rate of stuttering. The hierarchical structure within the clause did not influence the location of stuttering, and sentence complexity was not a factor in the rate of stuttering.     

Disfluencies of 3- and 5-year old Spanish-speaking children

This study examined the disfluent speech of 32 normally fluent monolingual, Spanish-speaking children from Puerto Rico. The total frequencies and types of speech disfluencies were examined in 15 children (8 girls and 7 boys) aged 3;5-4;0 years (M=3.76) and 17 children (8 girls and 9 boys) aged 5;0-5;5 years (M=5.18). When examining the total frequencies of speech disfluencies, results revealed no main effects for age or gender as well as no interactions. Moreover, no differences were observed between the age groups in most of the disfluency types, including the rank orders of the types. Revisions, interjections, and single-syllable word repetitions were the most frequently observed speech disfluencies for both age groups. Broken words, blocks, and repetitions of more than one syllable were the least frequent. Overall, results revealed both similarities and differences when compared with the reported speech behaviors of English-speaking children. EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES: The reader will learn about and be able to describe: (1). the influence of age and gender on the total frequencies of speech disfluencies in 3- and 5-year old Spanish-speaking children from Puerto Rico; (2). the amount and type of difluencies in these young children; and (3). how the speech disfluencies of these Spanish-speaking children are similar to and different from those reported in the speech of English-speaking children.     

What children say when asked “What?”: A study of the use of syntactic knowledge

The present study explores two questions: What is the nature of older children's syntactic knowledge; how is that knowledge used in an everyday speech situation? Six-, eight-, and ten-year-olds repeated grammatical sentences as read by the first experimenter. Half the sentences were syntactically clear, half slightly distorted. Clear versions displayed basic grammatical relations and constituent structure perspicuously. The second experimenter, who sat at the other end of the room, asked “What?” after each sentence. The syntactic changes children might make to accommodate the listener were examined. Although the children made a variety of changes, at all ages they tended to change distorted versions to clear ones, and to repeat clear versions. The results suggest that children's syntactic knowledge is deeper and more accessible than had been supposed.     

Disfluencies in cluttered speech

The purpose of this study was to examine the nature and frequency of occurrence of disfluencies, as they occur in singletons and in clusters, in the conversational speech of individuals who clutter compared to typical speakers. Except for two disfluency types (revisions in clusters, and word repetitions in clusters) nearly all disfluency types were virtually indistinguishable in frequency of occurrence between the two groups. These findings shed light on cluttering in several respects, foremost of which is that it provides documentation on the nature of disfluencies in cluttering. Findings also have implications for our understanding of the relationship between cluttering and typical speech, cluttering and stuttering, the Cluttering Spectrum Hypothesis, as well as the Lowest Common Denominator definition of cluttering. EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES: At the end of this activity the reader will be able to: (a) identify types of disfluency associated with cluttered speech; (b) contrast disfluencies in cluttered speech with those associated with stuttering; (c) compare the disfluencies of typical speakers with those of cluttering; (d) explain the perceptual nature of cluttering.     

Word frequency and children's stuttering: The relationship to sentence structure

This study investigated the relationship between word-frequency level and stuttering within the context of four slected sentence types. Fifteen stuttering children, aged 8–12, read 48 sentences of four different transformational types, and three word-frequency levels 12 simple active-affirmative-declarative (SAAD), 12 negative, 12 passive and 12 negative-passive. All sentences were identical in terms of underlying swings and variations of the SAAD sentences. Results agreed with Ronson's study with adults (1976) in that when the group rating was severe and the sentence type was negative, stuttering increased significantly as word-frequency level decreased. It appears that children's stuttering in relationship to word-frequency level is a different response that is subject to variables of sentence type and the severity rating of stuttering.     

Influence of stuttering therapy on clinicians'' disfluencies: Effects of client modeling

This study investigated whether student clinicians working with stutterers subsequently produce more disfluencies than student clinicians providing therapy to clients with other speech and language disorders. Seventeen graduate students working in a 6-wk summer camp setting were divided into two groups: eight who provided treatment for stutterers (group 1) and nine who provided therapy for clients with other communication disorders (group 2). All student clinicians were recorded during spontaneous speaking and oral reading tasks prior to camper arrival and following camper departure. An eight-category classification system was used to determine disfluency types. Findings revealed that Group 1 clinicians significantly decreased their total disfluencies between pre- and post-camp recordings on the spontaneous speaking task. Unexpectedly, this same group also substantially increased part-word repetitions and sound prolongations. The possibilities of incidental learning, reverse modeling, and overidentification with stuttering clients are discussed.     

Children's use ofGet passives

Children's use ofget in passivelike constructions was examined in this study. Fifty-eight children at three age levels were tested twice on imitation, comprehension, and production tasks. For the imitation and comprehension tasks, passive sentences withget were modeled in one instance and withbe in the other instance. On both tasks, children performed significantly better on theget items than on thebe items. For the production tasks, active sentences were used as the experimental stimuli. Among 928 production responses possible, children produced 423get passives and 6be passives. The frequency ofget passives increased with increasing age. Qualitative analyses were performed to determine agerelated changes in the pattern of linguistic strategies chosen. These data were consistent with predictions derived from a model of lexical directionality: Children used moreget thanbe passives and more truncated than full passives.     

Unambiguous generalization effects after treatment of non-canonical sentence production in German agrammatism

Agrammatism is-among others, characterized by a deficit in producing grammatical structures. Of specific difficulty is the utilization of complex, non-canonical sentence structures (e.g. object-questions, passives, object-clefts). Several studies have documented positive effects when applying a specific treatment protocol in terms of increasingly correct production of target complex sentence structures with some variance in generalization patterns noted across individuals. The objective of this intervention study was to evaluate an intervention program focussing on the production of non-canonical sentences. Hypotheses about the occurrence of treatment effects were formulated on the basis of syntactic complexity, referring to the amount of syntactic phrase structures necessary to generate specific German sentence structures. A multiple single case study with seven agrammatic participants was applied, each participant receiving training in the production of object-relative-clauses and who-questions. The investigation was designed to unambiguously evaluate for each individual, structure specific and generalized learning effects with respect to the production of object-relative-clauses, who-questions and passive sentences. Results showed significant improvements for all sentences types. This outcome is considered within methodological issues of treatment studies. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.     

Twenty-two-month-olds discriminate fluent from disfluent adult-directed speech

Deviation of real speech from grammatical ideals due to disfluency and other speech errors presents potentially serious problems for the language learner. While infants may initially benefit from attending primarily or solely to infant-directed speech, which contains few grammatical errors, older infants may listen more to adult-directed speech. In a first experiment, Post-verbal infants preferred fluent speech to disfluent speech, while Pre-verbal infants showed no preference. In a second experiment, Post-verbal infants discriminated disfluent and fluent speech even when lexical information was removed, showing that they make use of prosodic properties of the speech stream to detect disfluency. Because disfluencies are highly correlated with grammatical errors, this sensitivity provides infants with a means of filtering ungrammaticality from their input.     

Childhood stuttering and speech disfluencies in relation to children's mean length of utterance: a preliminary study

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of utterance length and complexity relative to the children's mean length of utterance (MLU) on stuttering-like disfluencies (SLDs) for children who stutter (CWS) and nonstuttering-like disfluencies (nonSLDs) for children who do not stutter (CWNS). Participants were 12 (3;1-5;11, years;months) children: 6 CWS and 6 age-matched (+/-5 months) CWNS, with equal numbers in each talker group (CWS and CWNS) exhibiting MLU from the lower to the upper end of normal limits. Data were based on audio-video recordings of each child in two separate settings (i.e., home and laboratory) during loosely structured, 30-min parent-child conversational interactions and analyzed in terms of each participant's utterance length, MLU, frequency and type of speech disfluency. Results indicate that utterances above children's MLU are more apt to be stuttered or disfluent and that both stuttering-like as well as nonstuttering-like disfluencies are most apt to occur on utterances that are both long and complex. Findings were taken to support the hypothesis that the relative "match" or "mismatch" between linguistic components of an utterance (i.e., utterance length and complexity) and a child's language proficiency (i.e., MLU) influences the frequency of the child's stuttering/speech disfluency. EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES: The reader will learn about and be able to: (1) compare different procedures for assessing the relationship among stuttering, length and complexity of utterance, (2) describe the difference between relative and absolute measures of utterance length, (3) discuss the measurement and value of mean length of utterance and its possible contributions to childhood stuttering, and (4) describe how length and complexity influence nonstuttering-like disfluencies of children who stutter as well as the stuttering-like disfluencies of children who do not stutter.