UTTERANCE TIMING AND CHILDHOOD STUTTERING

Articulatory speaking rate and response time latency are believed by m any to be important factors in determining whether stuttering will occ ur in a given utterance. Currently, however, there is little empirical evidence to suggest that these measures of utterance timing are direc tly related to stuttering. This study examined the relationship betwee n articulatory speaking rate and response time latency in the conversa tional speech of 12 boys who stutter (mean age = 55.2 months; SD = 8.8 months) who participated in 30-min conversational interactions with t heir mothers. Discriminant function analyses were conducted on 75 utte rances drawn from each child's speech sample to determine if the artic ulatory speaking rate or response time latency of a specific utterance was related to the likelihood that the child would stutter on that ut terance. No significant relationships between these measures of uttera nce timing and stuttering were found for any of the 12 subjects, and t here were no significant relationships between these two measures of u tterance timing. Findings do not provide support for many current theo ries of stuttering and suggest that the role of these measures of utte rance timing in predicting the occurrence of stuttering in conversatio nal speech in these theories may need to be reexamined. (C) 1997 Elsev ier Science Inc.