Another Case of Word-Final Disfluencies

Abstract

It has commonly been thought that stuttering and related disfluencies do not occur at the end of words. However, word-final disfluencies have been documented in the literature and may be underreported at present. This study investigated word-final disfluencies as they occurred in a 12-year-old boy. Word-final disfluencies constituted the major type of disfluencies in this individual and most often involved repetition of a linguistic unit larger than a singleton consonant. They occurred more frequently on content words than on function words, more frequently on multisyllabic words than on monosyllabic words, and more frequently at the end of a phrase than in initial or medial position. A direct therapy approach, aimed first at identification and then at suppression of the final repetitions, resulted in complete elimination of these repetitions. The origin of these word-final disfluencies and their resemblance to palilalia are discussed.

End-Word Dysfluencies in Young Children: A Clinical Report

“…The children had no history of neurological insult or syndrome, except 1 child in the study by Van Borsel et al [11]. While this child's EWDs were identified after what Van Borsel et al [[11], p. 150] described as a ‘migraine accompagnée', the mother reported that the EWDs had been present for a number of years prior to this episode. Some of the children in these studies were reported to have typical stuttering as well.…”

“…Details of the children with EWDs in the six extant reports [6,7,8,9,10,11] are shown in table 1, with examples of their EWDs when these could be confirmed. The children had no history of neurological insult or syndrome, except 1 child in the study by Van Borsel et al [11].…”

“…Rudmin [10] reported that his daughter produced EWDs for 14 months and subsequently started to stutter. Van Borsel et al [11] reported a child who started producing EWDs sometime during the school-age years, but they remitted with treatment. One child reported by McAllister and Kingston [8] had transient stuttering, followed by EWDs, while the other child only produced EWDs.…”

“…There is no consensus among the authors of these reports as to the origins of EWDs (for discussions see [8,10,11]). Linguistic, phonological and psychological factors have all been hypothesized to play a role.…”

“…At one end there are primarily problems with the initiation of words and phrases, characterized by repetition of smaller linguistic units, as most typically seen in developmental stuttering, and at the other end there are problems with the termination of words and phrases, characterized by the repetition of larger linguistic units, as most typically seen in palilalia. Van Borsel et al [11] suggested that EWDs lie somewhere in the middle of this continuum.…”