An online and face-to-face investigation of the effect of parent's speech rate on stuttering severity, frequency and speech rate of a child with stuttering

Speech rate, which has an important role in conveying the meaning of verbal expression, is thought to reflect the stuttering severity of children who stutter. The aim of this study is to compare the effect of reducing the parental speech rate on the stuttering severity, frequency and speech rate of children who stutter, as well as the speech rate of children who do/do not stutter and their parents. The study included 46 children who stutter between the ages of 3 and 6 years and 46 age- and gender-matched non-stuttering children and their parents of both groups. The speech rate of the children and their parents in the study and control groups, and the stuttering severity and frequency of the children who stutter were analysed with the recordings obtained from the parent-child interactive conversation, and the stuttering severity and frequency of the children who stutter were calculated using Weighted-SLD. Evaluation and interviews with children who stutter and their parents were conducted in two sessions. At the end of the first session, suggestions were given to parents in order to reduce the parental speech rate. The same evaluation methods repeated in the second session. As a result of the decrease in the speech rate of the parents, it was determined that there was a significant decrease in the stuttering severity and frequency of the children who stutter, while there was no significant difference in the speech rate of the children who stutter. No difference was found between the parents of stuttering and non-stuttering children in terms of speaking rate. In addition, it has been revealed that online and face-to-face evaluations and interviews are reliable tools that can be used interchangeably in terms of data collection method.