Self-perceived competence and social acceptance of young children who stutter: Initial findings.
Naomi Hertsberg, Patricia M Zebrowski
PMID 27614314WHAT IT FOUND
Four- and five-year-olds who stutter did not rate their general competence or social acceptance lower than fluent peers.
However, children who stuttered more often reported feeling less socially accepted, and girls rated competence higher than boys.
Key findings
01Children who stutter did not score lower than fluent peers on perceived general competence or social acceptance, or on their subscales.
02When children were pooled, girls had higher perceived general competence than boys (3.64 versus 3.31 on a 4-point scale).
03Children who produced more stuttering-like disfluencies reported lower perceived social acceptance.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample was small, and one child was removed as an outlier before analysis, so the findings need replication. The study measured perceptions at one time point, so it cannot show whether stuttering caused lower social acceptance or children who feel less accepted stutter more. All children were Caucasian native English speakers, and most had mild stuttering, so results may not apply to children from other backgrounds or with more frequent stuttering. Some speech recordings and phonology data were missing, and the analysis used multiple imputation to fill gaps. Young children often rate themselves very positively, so a self-report scale may miss subtle problems.
Declared interests
The paper reports that the larger longitudinal study was directed by investigators at the University of Illinois under grant RO1-DC05210. It does not give a separate conflict-of-interest declaration.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the similar group scores as proof that stuttering has no social-emotional effect. The study was small, cross-sectional, and found that children who stuttered more often reported feeling less socially accepted.