The influence of voicing adjustments on the location of stuttering in the spontaneous speech of young child stutterers

Abstract The spontaneous speech of nine young ( 4–6 1 2 ) male stutterers was recorded in 45-min play sessions. All subjects had stuttered for 6 mo or more and had been diagnosed as stutterers by experienced clinicians. Transcriptions of the tapes were marked to show where stuttering occurred relative to phonemic events. Stuttering occurred significantly more often on words for which voice was initiated after a pause—whether at the beginning or the middle of a sentence—than during running speech. In running speech, frequency of stuttering was influenced by the voicing feature of the sounds surrounding the stuttered phone.