The Loci of Stutterings In The Speech Sequence

Abstract

31 stutterers read twice a 1,000-word selection. All of the stutterings by each of the subjects were studied as well as by groups classified as mild, moderate, and severe, in relationship to the phonetic value of grammatical function, position in the sentence and length of the words read. The following conclusions were drawn from the data: Stutterers classed as mild had almost no stuttering on words which did not have at least one of the 4 above factors present. The presence of 1 or more factors was accompanied by a greater relative increase in percentage of stuttering. The presence of each additional factor beyond the first one was accompanied by a fairly constant increase in the relative degree of difficulty. There was a very high rank-order correlation between amount of stuttering and degree of presence of the 4 factors. Only 5.3% of the stutterings recorded could not be accounted for in terms of at least 1 of the 4 factors. It is chiefly in terms of these 4 factors that evaluations are made as to the prominence of each word in the speech sequence. This appears to be true of both stutterers and non-stutterers. It is probably in terms of the above evaluation that the loci of stutterings are to be accounted for. In general, stutterers tend to avoid words which are evaluated as being conspicuous and react therefore with caution, hesitancy, effort, conflict, etc. These reactions are predominantly stuttering as contrasted with normal or non-stuttering speech.