A comparison of nonword repetition skills of children who do and do not stutter

One aim of this study was to compare the phonological working memory skills of children who do and do not stutter based on their nonword repetition performances. In addition, the correlation between the disfluencies the children exhibited while repeating the non words and the number of syllables the nonwords contained was examined. Another aim of the study was to study the relationship between stuttering frequency of stuttering children obtained from a spontaneous sample with their nonword repetition performances. The study group consisted of 12 children who stuttered and 12 children who did not between the ages of 4-8. The two groups were matched in age and gender. Other criteria in choosing the groups were that that they did not have any language, hearing, neurological or psychiatric problems and that they had complete phonetic inventories. The consent of the families for their children to take part in the study was obtained. To assess the phonological working memory of children who do and do not stutter The Turkish Nonword Repetition Test was administered. Both groups obtained an accuracy score from the test. The performances of the stuttering group was also judged as fluent and dysfluent. The results did not indicate significant differences between the performances of children who stutter and do not stutter on the Turkish Nonword Repetition Test. Likewise, the fluency of children who stutter on the nonword repetition task did not significantly decrease as the number of syllables of the nonwords increased. Finally, the results showed no significant relationship between the stuttering frequency of children who stutter and their performance on The Turkish Nonword Repetition Test.