COMMUNICATIVE-BEHAVIOR OF MOTHERS OF STUTTERING AND NONSTUTTERING HIGH-RISK CHILDREN PRIOR TO THE ONSET OF STUTTERING

This portion of a multiyear prospective study was designed to investig ate the communicative style, speaking rate, and language complexity of 93 mothers of preschool children with a parental history of stutterin g. 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 mo thers of the children who continued to be seen as nonstutterers with r espect to either communicative style or speaking rate The only signifi cant difference between the two groups of mothers was the complexity o f their language. The pre-onset mean lengths of utterance (MLUs) of th e mothers of children who later came to be regarded as stutterers were significantly shorter than those of the mothers whose children contin ued to be viewed as being fluent. These findings suggest that the comm unicative behavior of mothers of normally fluent children do not contr ibute to the development of stuttering.