Developmental Disfluency in 2-, 4-, and 6-Year-Old Boys in Neutral and Stress Situations

Disfluency characteristics of 36 nonstuttering boys aged 2, 4, and 6 were analyzed from tape-recorded speech samples made during free play within neutral and stress situations. Comtparisons of frequency of disfluency were made among the different ages within each situation. In the neutral situation. 2-year-olds had significantly higher disfluency frequencies than either 4- or 6-year-olds for word repetitions and phrase repetitions; 2-.vear-olds also had a higher frequeney of disrhythmic phonations than 6-year-olds but not than 4-year-olds. In the stress situation, 2-year-olds had a higher frequency of average oscillation (number of repetitions per instance of disfluency) than either 4- or 6-year-olds and a higher frequency of disrhythmic phonations than 6-year-olds. Comparisons of frequency of disfluency were also made between the neutral and stress situations. The only statistically significant diferrences were for word repetitions and phrase repetitious tor 2-year-olds, with higher means for the neutral situation.

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