Evaluate of tone deafness in people who stutter

Stuttering is a speech disorder, resulting from the most generally fluency, rhythm, beats, pitch of the speech and removal of sound units. In addition, these are accompanied by secondary behaviors developed to overcome stuttering. The complex etiology of stuttering shows that it does not have a single reason; on the contrary, it is a combination of various reasons. Although there are many studies on stuttering in literature, many are still unexplained. The purpose of this study is to evaluate ?tone deafness? in people who stutter, to reveal the information which will provide us with the understanding of its nature and to lead new treatments for stuttering. In this study we evaluated 92 individuals with developmental stuttering (whose age average is 12,58±0,20 years) who applied to Baskent University Medical College, Otolaryngology Department. The control group consisted of 111 individuals of the same age group who speak fluently. All these individuals were applied The Tone Deafness Evaluation Test in order to evaluate their tone deafness level. Individuals suffering from stuttering were analyzed in two groups. Results of our study indicated that there was a significant relation between tone deafness scores (54,54±1,34) of first group (Group 1.a) taking stuttering therapy and tone deafness scores (49,16±1,11) of second group (Group 1.b) not taking stuttering therapy. There was also a statistically significant relationship (p?0,05) between stuttering groups and the control group in terms of tone deafness scores (60,86±0,71). Positive correlation of 18.2% was obtained between tone perception scores and the age of the participants. There were no correlation found between tone deafness and the other variables including sex, music education, trauma history, family history and secondary behaviors (p>0,05). With respect to the results of this study, it is notioned that individuals who stutter possibly have tone deafness. Keywords: Tone deafness, stuttering, stuttering therapy,