Communicative behavior of mothers of stuttering and nonstuttering high-risk children prior to the onset of stuttering

Abstract

This portion of a multiyear prospective study was designed to investigate the com municative style, speaking rate, and language complexity of 93 mothers of preschool children with a parental history of stuttering. At the initial session none of the children sampled was regarded as being a stutterer. One year later, 26 of the children were classified as stutterers. Statistical analyses revealed that prior to the onset of stuttering the mothers of these children did not differ from the mothers of the children who continued to be seen as nonstutterers with respect to either communicative style or speaking rate. The only significant difference between the two groups of mothers was the complexity of their language. The pre-onset mean lengths of utterance (MLUs) of the mothers of chil dren who later came to be regarded as stutterers were significantly shorter than those of the mothers whose children continued to be viewed as being fluent. These findings suggest that the communicative behavior of mothers of normally fluent children do not contribute to the development of stuttering.

Screening for Speech and Language Delay in Preschool Children: Systematic Evidence Review for the US Preventive Services Task Force

“…40 One study that evaluated history of asthma found no association with speech and language delay. 39 The 7 studies that assessed risk in non-English-speak- 47 cross-sectional, 45 prospective-cohort, [48][49][50][51] and concurrent-comparison 46 designs. Studies evaluated several types of delay including vocabulary, 46 speech, 45 stuttering, 47 language, [48][49][50][51] and learning.…”

“…39 The 7 studies that assessed risk in non-English-speak- 47 cross-sectional, 45 prospective-cohort, [48][49][50][51] and concurrent-comparison 46 designs. Studies evaluated several types of delay including vocabulary, 46 speech, 45 stuttering, 47 language, [48][49][50][51] and learning. [49][50][51] Significant associations were reported in the 2 studies that evaluated family history 45,48 and 1 of 2 studies that evaluated male gender.…”

Parental Language Input to Children at Stuttering Onset

“…Others have addressed the length and/or linguistic complexity of their utterances (Kloth et al, 1995;Yaruss & Conture, 1995). Langlois, Hanrahan, and Inouye (1986) noted that mothers of children who stutter used more imperative and interrogative utterances than the comparison-group mothers, who used more statements.…”

“…Few of these behaviors have motivated as much investigation as that of parental speech rate. Although numerous comparison and intervention studies have examined this aspect of parental verbal interaction, they have neither demonstrated unequivocally that rapid parental speech rates exacerbate stuttering in children nor generated conclusive evidence of rate differences among mothers of children who stutter and mothers of normally fluent children (Kelly & Conture, 1992;Kloth et al, 1995;Meyers & Freeman, 1985a, 1995b, 1995cSchulze & Johannsen, 1991;Stephenson-Opsal & Bernstein Ratner, 1988;Yaruss & Conture, 1995). Other factors thought to heighten communicative time pressure and demand, including interruptions, "simultalk" (the degree to which turns in a conversation overlap, such that speakers are talking simultaneously), decreased interspeaker latency, and question-asking, have proven equally challenging to link to fluency failure in children (Bernstein Ratner, 1992;Kelly & Conture, 1992;Langlois, Hanrahan, & Inouye, 1986;Newman & Smit, 1989;Weiss & Zebrowski, 1991;Wilkenfeld & Curlee, 1997).…”

“…To better evaluate the presence of linguistic differences among mothers of children who would go on to stutter and mothers of fluent children, Kloth et al (1995) developed a prospective study in which they examined communicative behaviors of mothers of preschool children at elevated genetic risk for stuttering. Children were considered at risk for developing a stuttering problem if at least one of their parents was a diagnosed stutterer.…”