Language disorders in preschool Egyptian children with stuttering

Abstract

Background /Aims: Stuttering typically emerges in the preschool years as children are experiencing substantial growth in their language and are beginning to combine words to form short sentences. Stuttering occurs during the process of planning utterances and using sounds to create words and sentences. A significant percentage of stutterers had a history of delayed language development and articulation disorders. This study's purpose was to examine differences between children who stutter (CWS) and child who do not stutter (CWNS) on standardized tests of IQ, language test, and articulatory tests. Patients and Methods: An analytic cross sectional study conducted on two groups of subjects. The study group consisted of 52 children (study group) who stutter (CWS) and control group included 52 children who do not stutter (CWNS). Each child in the study group was audio-recorded, which was subsequently assessed by (Arabic version of stuttering severity index "A-SSI") to provide information pertinent to the child's frequency and type of speech dysfluencies. Each child was determined and responded to standardized tests of cognitive, language, and articulatory assessment. Results: There was a significant decrease in receptive, expressive, and total language scores of language test within cases; regards to articulation test, there was a considerable increase of SSDs. These differences in receptive/expressive language and total language scores were significantly correlated with the overall stuttering frequency of cases CWS. Conclusion: Findings were taken to suggest the imbalance among components of the speech-language systems of CWS that may contribute to the difficulties they have establishing usual speech fluency.