Pragmatical Skills in Young Children who Stutter: A Preliminary Study

Mariëtte Embrechts, Eefke van Gaal, Hester de Wilde and Marie-Christine Franken

Asynchronies in developmental linguistic domains may be linked to speech disfluencies. So far, relatively little attention has been given to the pragmatical skills of young stuttering children. To investigate whether young stuttering children show deviant or slow developing pragmatical skills (communicative functions, conversation skills and narrative skills) 20 stuttering children (4-7 years old) were tested with the Nijmeegse Pragmatiek Test (Embrechts, Mugge & Van Bon, 2005), and compared to the results for 20 matched controls. Additional data on the pragmatical skills of the child were obtained by means of questionaires for the teacher and parents of the child.