Lexical and Fluency Changes in Young Children who Stutter

Stacy Wagovich and Nancy Hall

The purpose of this longitudinal study is to examine the relationship between changes in stuttering and changes in lexical diversity/rarity over time in young children who stutter.  Eleven children, ages 2;1 to 4;11, participated in the study.  All children performed within the average range on standardized language testing.  For each child, two conversational samples, 10 months apart, were analyzed for percent change in stuttering and percent change in measures of lexical diversity and lexical rarity.  Results are interpreted within the context of each child's age, vocabulary knowledge at the beginning of the study, and the change in disfluency over time.