SHS 616 Exam 1 ch 1-4

• people who stutter

• disfluency, NOT dysfluency

what phrases/words should we use for for stutters and disfluency

yes

do all cultures have stuttering

• cause is not completely understood but these are important factors

  • Genetic and congenital influences

  • Developmental influences

  • Environmental influences

    • these influences can be co-occurring or isolated factors

What causes people to stutter?

negative feelings and attitudes 

Repeated negative emotional experiences with stuttering lead to ____

around the age of 3 when children begin progressing at speech

when can we expect to see disfluencies

1. Presence of extra sounds

   1. repetition, prolongations, interjections, and revisions

2. Location and frequency of pauses

3. Rhythmic pattering in speech

4. Intonation and stress

5. Overall rate

Variables useful in distinguishing fluent vs disfluent speech:

Cluttering

inconsistent or rapid rate

rate and effort

Starkweather (1980,1987) suggests that ___ and ___ are critical to fluency

• Abnormally high frequency and/or duration of stoppages in the flow of speech

• also includes speakers’ reactions to stoppages

general definition of stuttering

behavioral, emotional, cognitive responses to repeated experiences of getting stuck while talking 

speakers’ reactions to stuttering include:

1. repetitions

2. prolongations

3. blocks

core behaviors of stuttering:

• may be single-syllable word or part-word repetitions

  • Word or syllable may be repeated more than two times, li-li-li- like this

what are repetitions

3 or more

how many iterations is considered stuttering

sound or airflow continues but movement of articulators is stopped

what are prolongations

one-half second

Prolongations as short as ____ may be perceived as abnormal

inappropriate stoppage of airflow or voicing; movement of articulators may be stopped

what are blocks

any level

• respiratory (glottal sounds like g or h)

• laryngeal

• articulatory

what levels can blocks occur at

articulatory

most common level blocks occur at

tremors of lips, tongue, jaw, and/or laryngeal muscles.

blocks may be accompanied by

10 percent

On average, people who stutter, stutter on about ___ of the words while reading

1 second

On average, stutters last about

Secondary behaviors

are learned behaviors that are triggered by the experience of stuttering or the anticipation of it.

1. escape

2. avoidance

2 main types of secondary behaviors

occur when the speaker is stuttering and attempts to terminate the stutter and finish the word (e.g., eye blinks and head nods).

what is an escape behavior

occur when the speaker anticipates a stutter and tries to avoid it by, for example, changing the word or saying “uh” just before the word.

• Pushing from table, eye blinks, head turns 

what are avoidance behaviors

feelings

The experience of stuttering often creates ___ of embarrassment and frustration in a speaker.

frequency and severity of stuttering

Fear and shame may develop eventually and may contribute to the ___

attitudes

are feelings that have become more permanent and affect the person’s beliefs. Beliefs may be about oneself or listeners

• May start as gradual increase in normal childhood disfluencies or may start as sudden appearance of prolongations or blocks

• Often sporadic at outset, coming and going for periods of days or weeks before becoming persistent

onset of stuttering

1. 18 months and 12 years

2. most often between 2 and 3.5 years (average 2.8 years)

when may onset occur and when is it most often/average age

4

If there is an onset before __, they have a better chance of spontaneously recovering

prevalence

A measure of how many people stutter at any given time

• 2.4 percent in kindergarten

• about 1 percent in school-age children

• slightly less than 1 percent in adults

what are the prevalence percentages

incidence

A measure of how many people have stuttered at some point in their live

about 5%

what is the incidence percentage

70-80%

____ percent of children who begin to stutter recover without treatment

true

t/f: The younger they start to recover, the more likely they are to spontaneously recover

• Having relatives who were persistent stutterers

• Being male

• Onset after 3.5 years

• Stuttering not decreasing during first year after onset

• Stuttering persisting beyond 1 year after onset

• Multiple unit repetitions (li-li-li-li-like this)

• Continued presence of prolongations and blocks

• Below normal phonological skills

list the attributes children have who are less likely to have a spontaneous recovery (higher likelihood of persistence)

• Being right-handed

  • Hemispheric dominance 

• Growing up in a home with a mother who is nondirective

  • Environment, pressure on communication

• Having a slower speech rate and more mature speech motor system

evidence that recovery is associated with:

true

t/f: Mothers of children who recovered used simpler language when talking to their children.

true

t/f: White matter tracts in brains of children who recovered may be more developed/mature than those who persisted

children who recovered than for persistent children

Duration of breastfeeding was longer for ____

almost even (1:1)

sex ratio at the onset of stuttering

3:1 (three males to one female)

sex ratio at school age

females

do males or females begin to stutter earlier and recover early and more frequent?

1. anticipation

2. consistency

3. adaptation

In the 1930s, interest in stuttering turned from its medical or organic aspects to social, psychological, and linguistic aspects such as these:

anticipation

People who stutter can predict which words they will stutter on in a reading passage.

avoidance

---

is a secondary behavior that can occur when the person who stutters anticipates a stutter coming

consistency

People who stutter tend to stutter on the same words each time they read a passage.

adaptation

People who stutter less each time they read a passage up to about six readings

• Consonants

• Sounds in word-initial position

• Sounds in contextual speech

• Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs

• Longer words

• Words at beginnings of sentences

• Stressed syllables

Brown showed that adults who stutter do so more frequently on:

Location and frequency

___ of stuttering are different in preschool children than in older individuals

pronouns and conjunctions

Stuttering in preschool children occurs most frequently on ____ (these occur frequently at the beginning of utterances in young children).

repetitions of parts of words and single-syllable words in sentence-initial position

Stuttering appears most frequently as _____.

linguistic planning and preparation

because stuttering in preschoolers tends to occur at beginning of syntactic units, the trigger seems to be ____

• When alone, when relaxed

• In unison with another speaker

• To an animal or infant

• In time or a rhythmic stimulus or when singing

• in a different dialect

• While simultaneously writing

• while swearing

• In a slow, prolonged manner

• Under loud masking noise

• while listening to delayed auditory feedback

• When shadowing another speaker

• when reinforced for fluent speech

• Many conditions have been found which reduce or eliminate stuttering. These include speaking:

reduced demands on speech motor control and language formation

Fluency-inducing conditions have been explained as resulting from ____ (Andrews et al., 1982)

cortical and subcortical networks

recent brain imaging studies have made it clear that ___ are impaired in people who stutter.

 they help individuals compensate for the deficits in neural systems, by providing timing cues, slowing the rate of speech production, and/or allowing the person who stutters to focus total attention on producing fluent speech.

why may fluency-inducing conditions work?

development

Majority of stuttering happens durin

neurodevelopmental disorder

Stuttering is a ______that usually appears in the preschool years when language development or the child’s environment create enough stress to trigger speech production discoordination that results in an excess of disfluencies.