Stuttering in Young Children and Level of Demand

Abstract

An instrument called a Probe was devised to present five levels of demand. Probes were given to three groups, an experimental group of nine young stutterers ranging in age from four to seven years, a control group of speech and language defective but non-stuttering children, and a second group of speech defect-free children. The hypotheses of the study were that the effect of level demand on dysfluency (Probe Level) is independent of (a) order of presentation, (b) duration of the speaker's response; and (c) the linguistic complexity of the speaker's response; and that when dysfluency has occurred at a given level of demand, recovery of fluency tends to occur upon reducing the level of demand. The data obtained from the probes supported the hypotheses. Date revealed significant monotonic increases in dysfluency with increasing Probe levels in all groups. Analysis of individual stutterers clearly supported group results. The Probes arrayed the three groups on a quantitative continuum of dysfluency as hypothesized and revealed qualitative differences between stutterers and both control groups, suggesting that dysfluency is a different phenomenon in stutterers than in non-stutterers. Data further revealed that when communicative demand was reduced, stutterers' dysfluency dropped to the level of the non-stuttering controls.

Behavior on the Probes was significantly related to severity of stuttering, suggesting the usefulness of further development of this instrument for test purposes.