Expressed parental concern regarding childhood stuttering and the Test of Childhood Stuttering.
Victoria Tumanova, Dahye Choi, Edward G Conture and 1 others
PMID 29397944WHAT IT FOUND
Parents who expressed concern rated more speech disfluencies on the TOCS, and their children stuttered more in a 300-word sample, but non-stuttered disfluencies and utterance length did not differ by concern.
Higher reported reactions to stuttering were linked to shorter utterances.
Key findings
01Children whose parents expressed concern about stuttering produced more stuttered disfluencies during the conversation than children whose parents did not express concern.
02Higher TOCS Speech Fluency scores were associated with more stuttered disfluencies during the child-examiner conversation.
03Among children whose parents expressed concern, higher TOCS Disfluency-Related Consequences scores were associated with shorter mean utterance length after age and language ability were controlled.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The stuttering counts and mean utterance length came from one 300-word conversation, so they may not represent a child's speech across settings. Children's reactions to stuttering were measured only by parent report, not by independent behavioural observation. The TOCS was normed for ages 4 to 12, but the study included 3-year-olds and used raw scores. The concerned and no-concern groups differed in mean age, so age had to be controlled in the analyses. The sample was recruited through advertisements in Middle Tennessee and at a university speech centre, which may limit generalisability. For children without parental concern, TOCS Disfluency-Related Consequences scores had little variability, so the third analysis was limited to the concerned group. The study reports associations and group differences, not cause-and-effect findings. The study could not separate whether shorter utterances reflect a reaction to stuttering, the consequences of stuttering, or both.
Declared interests
The supplied text does not include an author conflict-of-interest declaration. The publication metadata lists NIH extramural and non-U.S. government research support.
The easy way to misread this
Do not use the TOCS alone to judge how much a child stutters or why utterances are short. The study found group-level associations from one 300-word conversation and parent report, and the authors note that individual differences in parental judgement are possible.