Influence of Situation, Communicative Partner and tasks on Stuttering

Kia Hartfield, Edward Conture, Jan Karrass and Corrin Graham

The purpose of this study was to assess mean length of utterance (MLU) and (non)stuttered disfluencies associated with changes in listener (parent-clinician), communicative (conversation-narrative), and situational (home-clinic) variables with preschool children who do (CWS; n=8) and do not stutter (CWNS; n=7). Findings indicated an influence of listener, situation and communicative variables on MLU; however, the ratio of Stuttering-Like Disfluencies/Total Disfluencies (SLD/TD) consistently differentiated both talker groups, regardless of changes in variables. Findings suggest that although stuttering varies across different contexts, the SLD/TD ratio can be used to differentiate between CWS/CWNS regardless of the context where stuttering is measured.