Introduction Recently, Rispoli and Hadley investigated the link between language development and disfluency in children who do not stutter (CWNS). They claimed that the frequency/location of disfluencies was related to children's use of emergent language skills (Rispoli & Hadley, 2001). Subsequent work (Rispoli & Hadley, 2008) demonstrated that although revision rates increased along with IPSYN scores, stall rates did not. Thus, revisions and stalls were interpreted to reflect two different phenomena. We applied Rispoli and Hadley's hypothesis to children who stutter who would later persist (CWS-P) or recover (CWS-R). We believed that this would shed light on the nature of the relationship between language and stuttering. Methods Six CWS-R, six CWS-P and 9 CWNS who were between the ages of 30 and 43 months at the initial visit were included. All children were subsequently followed for 12 months, with language samples collected at 0, 6 and 12 months. Samples were scored for IPSYN, utterance length, and the presence of revisions and stalls in active declarative sentences. Results A hierarchical linear model analysis was conducted using a mixed model approach. As we predicted, there were no significant changes in the rate of “stalls” over grammatical development in any of the three subject groups. “Revisions” increased over grammatical development for CWS-P, but there was no effect for the other two groups. Discussion Rispoli and Hadley interpreted increased revisions to indicate increased monitoring. As this trend was apparent only in CWS-P, it may be that the monitoring relationship is more salient in this group. Further, CWS-P may use revisions in response to a developing expectancy and anticipation of the stuttering moment. The finding that revisions increase with language skills only in CWS-P is clinically relevant. Interventions which acknowledge an early role of monitoring or expectancy may be more effective for this group.
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