Predicting stuttering from linguistic factors for German speakers in two age groups

doi:10.1016/S0094-730X(03)00009-3

Journal of Fluency Disorders

Volume 28, Issue 2, Summer 2003, Pages 95-113

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0094-730X(03)00009-3 Get rights and content

Abstract

Brown’s factors [J. Speech Disorders 10 (1945) 181] predict the likely loci of disfluency in English-speaking adults who stutter. A word is more likely to be stuttered for these speakers if it is a content word, starts with a consonant, is positioned at the beginning of a sentence, and if it is a long word. These same factors were examined in native German-speaking children and adults who stutter. Speech data of 15 German adults and 17 children were coded according to Brown’s factors. For the adult group, it was predicted that words starting with consonants would not lead to as much of an increase in disfluencies compared with English samples, because of cross-linguistic differences in syllable onset properties. It was predicted that stuttering would be more likely in later sentence positions in German because in German the verb is usually near the end of a sentence. There were no obvious reasons to expect differences on the two remaining factors, content words and word length. With children, it was hypothesised that Brown’s factors that specify level of linguistic difficulty would not be such a good predictor of stuttering rate. Specifically, it was predicted that the difference in stuttering rate between function and content words would be lower in children. For the adults both word type (content/function) and word length increased stuttering rate significantly, whereas changes in stuttering rate for the other two factors were non-significant. It was also found that when word difficulty (based on a combined measure of all factors) increased, stuttering rate rose. With children, only the word-length factor was significant, and stuttering rate was not governed to the same extent by overall word difficulty. Conclusions are drawn as to the effect of linguistic and motor influences on stuttering.

Educational objectives: The reader will learn about and be able to describe: (1) how linguistic factors affect stuttering rates in German; (2) the different patterns of adults and children who stutter and how language might influence this pattern; and (3) how to interpret these findings in light of a current theory of fluency failure.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants were all native speakers of German. All had been diagnosed as exhibiting stuttering behaviour. Of the 15 adults, 5 were female and 10 were male. Their ages ranged from 16 years 3 months to 47 years 1 month, with a mean age of 29 years 8 months. They were all voluntary participants. Recordings of 17 school-aged children (6 girls, 11 boys) were analysed. All of the children were attending a speech therapy centre in Bad Salzdetfurth. Their ages ranged from 7 years 4 months to 11 years

Results

Individual stuttering rates were calculated, by dividing the number of stuttered words by the total number of words (i.e., stuttered and non-stuttered). Stuttering rates for the individual word factors were calculated in the same way. Thus, for content word stuttering rate, for instance, the number of stuttered content words was divided by the total number of content words both stuttered and non-stuttered. For the adults stuttering rates over all words ranged from 1.95 to 39.30% with a mean of

Discussion

Overall, for the adults it was shown that increasing word difficulty was associated with an increase in disfluencies. As such linguistic complexity is a good predictor for stuttering in adulthood. When considering the comparison between adults and children in respect of Brown’s four factors (the factor “grammatical class” interpreted here as the function–content word distinction) the striking and counter-intuitive finding is that children stutter more on linguistically “easier” words. For

Acknowledgements

Peter Howell is supported by the Wellcome Trust. Grateful thanks to Dipl. Psychologist Horst M. Oertle from the speech therapy centre in Bad Salzdetfurth for help with the speech samples of German children who stutter.

References (40)

K. Kadi-Hanifi et al.
Syntactic analysis of the spontaneous speech of normally fluent and stuttering children
Journal of Fluency Disorders
(1992)
L. Osterhout et al.
Words in the brain: Lexical determinants of word-induced brain activity
Journal of Neurolinguistics
(2002)
S.J. Segalowitz et al.
Lexical access of function versus content words
Brain and Language
(2000)
M.E. Wingate
The loci of stuttering: Grammar or prosody
Journal of Communication Disorders
(1979)
Au-Yeung, J., Howell, P., & Vallejo Gomez, I. (in press). Phonological difficulty and stuttering: A comparison between...
Bastiaansen, M., Van Der Linden, M., ter Keurs, M., Dijkstra, T., & Hagoort, P. (2002). Open-class words produce a...
Bloodstein, O. (1987). A Handbook on stuttering (4th ed.). Chicago: The National Easter Seal...
Bloodstein, O. (1995). A Handbook on stuttering (5th ed.). Chicago: The National Easter Seal...
O. Bloodstein et al.
Grammatical function in the relation to stuttering in young children
Journal of Speech and Hearing Research
(1967)
O. Bloodstein et al.
Early stutterings: Some aspects of their form and distribution
Journal of Speech and Hearing Research
(1981)

Bock, K., & Levelt, W. (1994). Grammatical encoding. In M. A. Gernsbacher (Ed.), Handbook of psycholinguistics (pp....

S.F. Brown

Stuttering with relation to word accent and word position

Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology

(1938)

S.F. Brown

The loci of stutterings in the speech sequence

Journal of Speech Disorders

(1945)

C.M. Brown et al.

Electrophysiological signatures of visual lexical processing: Open- and closed-class words

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

(1999)

Hartmann, R. R. K., & Stork, F. C. (1972). Dictionary of language and linguistics. London: Applied Science...

Howell, P., & Au-Yeung, J. (2002). The EXPLAN theory of fluency control and the diagnosis of stuttering. In E. Fave...

P. Howell et al.

Exchange of stuttering from function words to content words with age

Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research

(1999)

M. Jayaram

Grammatical factors in stuttering

Journal of the Indian Institute of Science of Science

(1981)

Johnson, S. (1998). Exploring the German language. London: Arnold...

Kanerva, J. (1989). Focus and phrasing in cichewa. Doctoral dissertation, Stanford University, Palo Alto,...

Cited by (30)

Effect of phonological and morphological factors on speech disfluencies of Kannada speaking preschool children who stutter
2019, Journal of Fluency Disorders
Citation Excerpt :
However, in CWS mixed findings are reported. While Alqhazo and Al-Dennawi (2018) report greater frequency of stuttering with an increase in word length in Jordanian school-age CWS, increased stuttering on shorter words was reported by Dworzynski et al. (2003) in German-speaking CWS. Further, few other studies revealed no significant effect of word length on the rate of stuttering, specifically in English speaking preschool CWS (Howell & Au-Yeung, 1995; Throneburg et al., 1994).
Empirical investigations have revealed a strong association between linguistic factors and stuttering, specifically phonological and morphological factors. However, the effect of these factors is suggested to vary across languages owing to the differences in their linguistic structure. Further, the trend is found to vary between AWS and CWS. Literature in this regard is scarce in the Kannada language, particularly in children. Hence, the study was driven by the need to understand the effect of phonological and morphological factors on stuttering in Kannada speaking CWS.
Spontaneous speech samples were obtained from twenty Kannada speaking preschool CWS with a confirmed diagnosis of stuttering by an experienced speech-language pathologist. The recorded samples were transcribed, and disfluencies were marked. Further, the stuttered words were analysed for phonological and morphological features. The phonological factors included were phoneme position in a word, phoneme type and word length. Morphological factors consisted of word class and word end inflectional morphology. The percentage of stuttering was calculated with respect to each of the factors mentioned above.
Phoneme in the initial position of a word and words beginning with consonants had a higher rate of stuttering. Word length, word class and word end inflections were found to have no significant effect on the rate of stuttering in CWS.
Overall, current findings revealed that stuttering might manifest differently across languages varying in their linguistic structures.
Testing orofacial abilities of children who stutter: The Movement, Articulation, Mandibular and Sensory awareness (MAMS) assessment procedure
2011, Journal of Fluency Disorders
The purpose of this article is to introduce a new assessment designed to measure the orofacial abilities of children who stutter (CWS), the Movement, Articulation, Mandibular and Sensory Awareness (MAMS) Orofacial Assessment. The new instrument was developed and validated to measure orofacial abilities in a comprehensive manner.
A group of 43 CWS (mean age 13.10 years, S.D. 2.10 years) and a control group of 32 fluent children (mean age 13.4 years, S.D. 2.6 years) were tested with the new tool. It was hypothesized, that (a) the MAMS is a reliable and valid instrument to measure orofacial abilities in CWS, (b) fluent children have better orofacial abilities than CWS and (c) that the therapy outcome of CWS depend on their orofacial abilities.
The MAMS Orofacial Assessment proved to be a valid and reliable instrument to assess orofacial abilities. Compared with their fluent peers, CWS had significantly worse orofacial abilities. CWS with better orofacial abilities had a better prognosis for therapy outcome.
The new instrument is a reliable and valid tool to measure orofacial abilities and MAMS distinguishes CWS and controls. Orofacial abilities are one set of factors that influence therapy outcome for CWS.
Educational objectives: The reader will get an overview over of the literature on orofacial abilities in people who stutter and will learn about and be able to (1) describe different characteristics of orofacial abilities, (2) use the MAMS Orofacial Assessment in the diagnostic process for CWS and for research purposes, and (3) interpret the results of the MAMS to use them for therapy planning.
Altered effective connectivity and anomalous anatomy in the basal ganglia-thalamocortical circuit of stuttering speakers
2010, Cortex
Citation Excerpt :
One interpretation of this result is that the negative project for non-stuttering speakers indicates ordered timing and sequencing signals provided for the preSMA by the basal ganglia-thalamus, whereas the positive projection for stuttering speakers may indicate insufficient control signal and much unordered signal input from the basal ganglia-thalamus, thus resulting in uncontrolled hyperactivity in the preSMA (see Fig. 3). These results reflect stuttering speakers' difficulties (but not incapability) in the selection and sequencing of speech movements (e.g., Blomgren et al., 1998; Dworzynski et al., 2003; Howell and Au-Yeung, 1995; Melnick and Conture, 2000; Ning et al., 2007). In terms of output of the preSMA, our results showed no significant differences between stuttering and non-stuttering speakers.
Combining structural equation modeling (SEM) and voxel-based morphometry (VBM), this study investigated the interactions among neural structures in the basal ganglia-thalamocortical circuit (BGTC) in the left hemisphere of stuttering and non-stuttering speakers. Stuttering speakers (n = 12) and non-stuttering controls (n = 12) were scanned while performing a picture-naming task and a passive-viewing (baseline) task. Results showed significant differences between stuttering and non-stuttering speakers in both effective connectivity and anatomical structures in the BGTC in the left brain. Specifically, compared to non-stuttering speakers, stuttering speakers showed weaker negative connectivity from the left posterior middle temporal gyrus (PMTG) to the putamen, but stronger positive connectivity from the putamen to the thalamus, from the thalamus to the PMTG and anterior supplementary motor area (preSMA), and from the anterior superior temporal gyrus (ASTG) to the preSMA. Accompanying such altered connectivity were anatomical differences: compared to non-stuttering controls, stuttering speakers showed more grey matter (GM) volume concentration in the left putamen, less GM volume concentration in the left medial frontal gyrus and ASTG, and less white matter volume concentration underlying the left posterior superior temporal gyrus inside the BGTC. These results shed significant light on the neural mechanisms (in terms of both functional connectivity and neural anatomy) of stuttering.
A model of serial order problems in fluent, stuttered and agrammatic speech
2007, Human Movement Science
Citation Excerpt :
Activation rate buildup would be rapid for these words, but less rapid for those function words which have somewhat more complex linguistic properties. For instance, all personal pronouns are single syllables with CVC structure, whereas “around” is an adverb (also a function word), is bisyllabic and ends with a consonant cluster (see Dworzynski, Howell, & Natke, 2003; Howell & Au-Yeung, 2007; Howell, Au-Yeung, Yaruss, & Eldridge, 2006, who document phonetic differences between function and content words for various languages). The rapid buildup can be represented by a sharp slope on their activation function.
Many models of speech production have attempted to explain dysfluent speech. Most models assume that the disruptions that occur when speech is dysfluent arise because the speakers make errors while planning an utterance. In this contribution, a model of the serial order of speech is described that does not make this assumption. It involves the coordination or ‘interlocking’ of linguistic planning and execution stages at the language–speech interface. The model is examined to determine whether it can distinguish two forms of dysfluent speech (stuttered and agrammatic speech) that are characterized by iteration and omission of whole words and parts of words.
Linguistic stress, within-word position, and grammatical class in relation to early childhood stuttering
2004, Journal of Fluency Disorders
Citation Excerpt :
There seems to be a developmental pattern in grammatical class and stuttering. With increasing age, there is an increase in content word stuttering and a decrease in function word stuttering (Au-Yeung, Howell, & Pilgrim, 1998; Bloodstein & Gantwerk, 1967; Bloodstein & Grossman, 1981; Dworzynski, Howell, & Natke, 2003; Howell, Au-Yeung, & Sackin, 1999; Rommel, 2001). It has been suggested that the relationship between stuttering events and stress is weaker in children (Bloodstein & Gantwerk, 1967; Howell et al., 1999) due to the fact that function words are less frequently stressed.
The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether the link that has been established between stuttering and linguistic stress in adolescents and adults (the so-called stress effect) can also be observed in childhood stuttering. To account for confounding variables, both within-word position and grammatical class were measured, because these factors covary with linguistic stress. Speech samples of 22 preschool children (mean time of 9 months since onset of stuttering) were analyzed. The relative stress of each syllable was rated and syllables were categorized into long and short stressed, unstressed, and intermediately stressed syllables. Results showed that 97.8% of stuttering events occurred on first syllables of words and 76.5% on the first sound of syllables, that means a clear word-initial effect. Stuttering frequency on first syllables of function words was 16.9% and significantly higher than the frequency of stuttered first syllables of content words (11.5%). In function words short stressed syllables and intermediately stressed syllables were stuttered more often than unstressed syllables. The analysis for individual disfluency types revealed that, for function words, stuttering on short stressed syllables was associated with prolongations and syllable repetitions. However, in intermediately stressed syllables stuttering coincided most often with one-syllable word repetitions. This differentiation of the stress effect may suggest different causal mechanisms underlying these disfluency types.
Educational objectives: The reader will learn about and be able to: (1) describe how within-word position, grammatical class, and linguistic stress effect stuttering frequency in preschool children who stutter; (2) explain how the occurrence of individual disfluency types depends on linguistic stress; (3) discuss how patterns of adults and preschool children who stutter differ in regard to these aspects.
Linguistic factors and stuttering in Nepali speaking adults who stutter
2023, Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics

View all citing articles on Scopus

¹: Co-corresponding author. Tel.: +44-20-7679-5365; fax: +44-20-7436-4276.

View full text