Initiation versus execution time during manual and oral counting by stutterers.

Severe stutterers were found to be significantly slower than control subjects in performing a speech counting task that was judged to be fluent and in silently counting on their fingers. For both counting tasks the time taken to execute the numerical series accounted for more of the difference between severe stutterers and controls than the time taken to prepare and initiate the task. Mild stutterers were not significantly slower than controls on either counting task.