A preliminary investigation of segmentation and rhyme abilities of children who stutter

The present study investigated segmentation and rhyme abilities, skills critical for phonological encoding, of children who stutter (CWS) and those who do not (CNS). Participants were 9 CWS (8 males and 1 female, mean age = 11.1, SD = 2.31) in the age range of 7 and 13 years and 9 age and sex matched CNS (mean age = 11.2, SD = 2.19). Participants performed two verbal monitoring tasks, phoneme and rhyme monitoring, in silent naming. Performances in the verbal monitoring tasks were compared to a neutral, nonverbal tone monitoring task. Additionally, the complexity of the phoneme monitoring task was varied such that participants had to monitor for singletons vs. consonant clusters. Repeated measures analysis of the response time data did not reveal significant differences between the groups in the three monitoring tasks. Analysis of the complexity data revealed a trend for slower monitoring of the consonant clusters in the CWS group compared to the CNS. Present findings do not support a deficit in segmentation and rhyme abilities in CWS, although there was some preliminary evidence of segmentation difficulties with increasing phonological complexity of the stimuli.Educational objectives: At the end of this activity the reader will be able to: (a) discuss the literature on phonological encoding skills in children who stutter, (b) describe skills underlying the phonological encoding process, (c) summarize whether or not children who stutter differ from those who do not in segmentation and rhyme abilities, (d) suggest future areas of research in the investigation of segmentation and rhyme monitoring abilities in children who stutter.

► We examined segmentation and rhyme abilities in 9 children who stutter (CWS) and 9 children who do not stutter (CNS).
► Participants were compared in performances in phoneme, rhyme, and tone (neutral) monitoring tasks.
► Results revealed comparable performance between groups in the three monitoring tasks.
► The CWS showed a trend for slower monitoring of consonant clusters compared to singletons in the phoneme monitoring task.
► Findings shed light on the role of phonological encoding processes in stuttering.