Phonetic complexity of words immediately following utterance-initial productions in children who stutter

• Previous studies link increased phonetic complexity with stuttered speech.
• However, this pattern has not been observed in preschool-aged children.
• The EXPLAN model predicts complexity of the upcoming word impacts fluency.
• We examined phonetic difficulty of the following word in children who stutter.
• Complexity of the second word did not influence stuttering on the preceding word.

PurposeThe purpose of the present study was to analyze phonetic complexity in the speech of children who stutter in a manner distinct from previous research with specific emphasis on three methodological considerations: (1) analysis of the word immediately following the initial word in the utterance; (2) accounting for other additional linguistic and lexical factors; and (3) discrimination of disfluency types produced.MethodsParent–child conversations were transcribed for 14 children who stutter (mean age = 3 years, 7 months; SD = 11.20 months) and coded for phonetic complexity using the Word Complexity Measure (WCM). Phonetic complexity of words immediately following the initial fluent or stuttered words of an utterance were included within binomial regression analyses, along with additional linguistic and lexical factors.ResultsAnalyses indicate that the phonetic complexity of the second word of an utterance was not a significant contributor to the likelihood of whole- or part-word repetitions on the preceding initial word of the utterance.ConclusionFindings support previous data that suggest the phonetic complexity of speech, at least as measured by the WCM, does not distinctly influence stuttered speech in preschool-age children.