College of Behavioral & Social Sciences

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    Utterance-level predictors of stuttering-like, stall, and revision disfluencies in the speech of young children who do and do not stutter
    (2021) Garbarino, Julianne; Bernstein Ratner, Nan; Hearing and Speech Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Disfluencies are generally divided into two types: stuttering-like disfluencies (SLDs), which are characteristic of the speech of people who stutter, and typical disfluencies (TDs), which are produced by nearly all speakers. In several studies, TDs have been further divided into stalls and revisions; stalls (fillers, repetitions) are thought to be prospective, occurring due to glitches in planning upcoming words and structures, while revisions (word and phrase repetitions, word fragments) are thought to be retrospective, occurring when a speaker corrects language produced in error.This dissertation involved the analysis of 15,782 utterances produced by 32 preschool-age children who stutter (CWS) and 32 matched children who do not stutter (CWNS). The first portion of this dissertation focused on how syntactic factors relate to disfluency. Disfluencies (of all three types) were more likely to occur when utterances were ungrammatical. The disfluency types thought a priori to relate to planning (SLDs and stalls) occurred significantly more often before errors, which is consistent with these disfluencies occurring, in part, due to difficulty planning the error-containing portion of the utterance. Previous findings of a distributional dichotomy between stalls and revisions were not replicated. Both stalls and revisions increased in likelihood in ungrammatical utterances, as the length of the utterance increased, and as the language level of the child who produced the utterance increased. This unexpected result suggests that both stalls and revisions are more likely to occur in utterances that are harder to plan (those that are ungrammatical and/or longer), and that as children’s language develops, so do the skills they need to produce both stalls and revisions. The second part of this dissertation assessed the evidence base for the widespread recommendation that caregivers of young CWS should avoid asking them questions, as CWS have been thought to stutter more often when answering questions. CWS were, in fact, less likely to stutter when answering questions than in other utterance types. Given this finding, the absence of previous evidence connecting question-answering to stuttering, and the potential benefits of asking children questions, clinicians should reconsider the recommendation for caregivers of CWS to reduce their question-asking.
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    The Development of Syntactic Complexity and the Irregular Past Tense in Children Who Do and Do Not Stutter
    (2009) Bauman, Jessica; Ratner, Nan B; Hearing and Speech Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This study examined spontaneous language samples and standardized test data obtained from 31 pairs of children who stutter (CWS), ages 25-59 months, and age-matched children who do not stutter (CWNS). Developmental Sentence Scores (DSS; Lee, 1974) as well as the relationships among age, DSS, and other standardized test scores were compared for both groups. No substantial differences were found between groups in the syntactic complexity of spontaneous language; however, the two groups show different relationships between age and DSS and between test scores and DSS. Additionally, observed differences between CWS and CWNS in patterns of past-tense errors and usage are discussed in light of a recent theoretical model of language performance in populations with suspected basal ganglia involvement (Ullman, 2004).
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    Fluency of School-Aged Children With a History of Specific Expressive Language Impairment: An Exploratory Study
    (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, 2002-02) Boscolo, Brian; Ratner, Nan Bernstein; Rescorla, Leslie
    A large volume of literature now links language demand and fluency behaviors in children. Although it might be reasonable to assume that children with relatively weak language skills might demonstrate higher levels of disfluency, the sparse literature on this topic is characterized by conflicting findings on the relationship between language impairment and disfluency. However, in studies finding elevated disfluency in children with specific language impairment, a higher frequency of disfluencies more characteristic of stuttering has been noted. This study asks whether children with long-standing histories of language delay and impairment are more disfluent, and display different types of disfluencies than their typically developing, age-matched peers. Elicited narratives from 22 pairs of 9-year-old children were analyzed for fluency characteristics. Half of the children had histories of specific expressive language impairment (HSLI-E), whereas the others had typical developmental histories. The children with HSLI-E were significantly more disfluent than their peers and produced more stutter-like disfluencies, although these behaviors were relatively infrequent in both groups. Implications for clinical intervention and future research are discussed.
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    Parental Perceptions of Children’s Communicative Development at Stuttering Onset
    (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, 2000-10) Ratner, Nan Bernstein; Silverman, Stacy
    There has been clinical speculation that parents of young stuttering children have expectations of their children’s communication abilities that are not well-matched to the children’s actual skills. We appraised the language abilities of 15 children close to the onset of stuttering symptoms and 15 age-, sex-, and SES-matched fluent children using an array of standardized tests and spontaneous language sample measures. Parents concurrently completed two parent-report measures of the children’s communicative development. Results indicated generally depressed performance on all child speech and language measures by the children who stutter. Parent report was closely attuned to child performance for the stuttering children; parents of nonstuttering children were less accurate in their predictions of children’s communicative performance. Implications for clinical advisement to parents of stuttering children are discussed.
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    Caregiver–Child Interactions and Their Impact on Children’s Fluency: Implications for Treatment
    (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, 2004-01) Ratner, Nan Bernstein
    There is a relatively strong focus in the stuttering literature on the desirability of selected alterations in parental speech and language style in the management of early stuttering. In this article, the existing research support for such recommendations is evaluated, together with relevant research from the normal language acquisition literature that bears on the potential consequences of changing parental interaction style. Recommendations with relatively stronger and weaker support are discussed. Ways in which children’s communication styles and fluency may be altered through newer fluency treatment protocols are contrasted with older, more general parent advisements. Finally, directions for future research into the efficacy of recommendations made to the parents of children who stutter (CWS) are offered.