RELIABILITY OF JUDGMENTS OF STUTTERING AND DISFLUENCY IN YOUNG CHILDRENS SPEECH

This study examined interjudge agreement levels for two forms of judgm ents of overt speech characteristics in young children's speech stutte ring and disfluency types. Five experienced adult listeners made judgm ents of disfluencies and stuttering in samples of eight young children 's spontaneous speech on separate occasions with the order of tasks co unterbalanced across Listeners. Results showed that the interjudge rel iability for judgments based on a disfluency taxonomy was not signific antly different from that based on stuttering. The high coefficients o f reliability for both procedures indicated that subjects would be ran ked consistently on the basis of either form of judgment. The importan ce of both forms of judgments to stuttering treatment and research is discussed. (C) 1998 by Elsevier Science Inc.