Characteristics of stuttering-like disfluencies in Dutch-speaking children

The purpose of this study was to compare the characteristics of stuttering-like disfluencies in a group of native Dutch-speaking children who stutter (n = 693), with a group of normally fluent children (n = 79). Methods involved the observation of stuttering-like disfluencies in participants’ conversational speech samples (total 77,200 words), particularly the frequency, duration and physical tension of instances of stuttering. Findings indicate that stuttering-like disfluencies exhibited by children who stutter are significantly more frequent, longer in duration and involve more physical tension when compared to those of normally fluent children. Furthermore, applying a criterion of 3% stuttering-like disfluencies to distinguish stuttering from normally fluent children resulted in a high degree of sensitivity (0.9452) and specificity (0.9747). Results were taken to suggest that characteristics of stuttering-like disfluencies of Dutch-speaking children are similar to those of English-speaking children and that talker group membership criteria for childhood stuttering can reasonably be extrapolated from the Dutch to the English language and vice versa.Educational objectives: The reader will be able to: (1) describe characteristics of stuttering-like disfluencies, (2) define properties such as frequency, duration and physical tension for stuttering children and normally fluent children, and (3) make use of data on sensitivity and specificity of the criterion of 3% stuttering-like disfluencies to distinguish stuttering and normally fluent children.