The disfluency loci of stuttering and nonstuttering Mandarin-speaking preschool children and adults (Chinese)

This investigation compared disfluency loci in the speech of stuttering and normally fluent speakers of Mandarin. It was designed to investigate whether differences existed in the distribution of disfluent events according to various linguistic parameters: specific grammatical classes, the global categories of function and content words, initial position of phrases, initial position of sentences, and initial statements in discourse units. Stuttering-like disfluencies (SLD) were identified in audio-tape recordings of 56 participants' conversational speech. They were divided into five groups: adults who stuttered, younger and older preschool children who stuttered, and younger and older normally fluent preschool children.; The results show that the stuttering adults had a higher percentage of SLD in content words than the younger stuttering preschool children, whereas the younger stuttering preschool children had a higher percentage of SLD in function words than the stuttering adults. For all the stuttering participants, however, the percentage of SLD in content words was higher than that in function words. Additionally, no significant differences in the proportional distribution of SLD occurred in content and function words when comparing younger to older preschool children. Nevertheless, for all the preschool children, the percentages of SLD that occurred in both verbs and pronouns were significantly higher than the percentages of SLD in other classes.; For stuttering children, SLD occurred more often in the initial position than in the other positions both in phrases and in sentences. However, the initial position effect within the discourse units was significant for stuttering adults, but not for stuttering children. The stuttering children had larger differences between the observed and expected percentages of SLD in initial positions of phrases and of sentences, but smaller differences of the occurrence of SLD between initial and noninitial statements than those of the stuttering adults.; The findings are compared to the results of previous studies in English, and several interpretations are proposed. Limitations of the study and worthwhile future studies are discussed.; This study was partly supported by grant # R01-DC00459 from the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, National Institutes of Health, Principal Investigator: Ehud Yairi.