CHILDREN RECOVERED FROM STUTTERING WITHOUT FORMAL TREATMENT - PERCEPTUAL ASSESSMENT OF SPEECH NORMALCY

Current evidence suggests that young children who recover from stutter ing are essentially stutter-free. However, there is no evidence to ind icate if their speech is perceptually indistinguishable from normally fluent peers or whether they retain perceptually unusual speech. One i mportant example of recovery From stuttering is children who have reco vered without receiving formal treatment. An investigation was conduct ed to determine if the speech of these children is perceptually differ ent from the speech of children who have never stuttered. Speakers con sisted of 10 preschool and early school-age children documented as rec overed from stuttering without benefit of Formal treatment. In a serie s of studies they were compared with 10 children who had never stutter ed. Three groups of judges-sophisticated, unsophisticated, and experie nced-were separately asked, using videotaped speech samples of the chi ldren, to decide which samples were from children who used to stuffer. Results revealed that the children who recovered from stuttering were perceptually indistinguishable from the normal controls. The same res ult was obtained regardless of whether the samples were presented in p aired-stimulus or single-stimulus mode. Two of the groups of judges we re also instructed to rate the speech naturalness of the speech sample s. The speakers were not distinguished on this measure either. Methodo logical issues and the implications of the Findings are discussed.