A Study of effect of word meaning on the frequency of dysfluency in adult with developmental Stuttering

Abstract   Introduction: Stuttering is one of the most prevalent speech and language disorders. Symptomatology of stuttering has been surveyed from different aspects as biological, developmental, environmental, emotional, learning and linguistic. Literature shows that "word meaning" as a linguistic feature may influence frequency of dysfluency in this disorder. Therefore aim of this study was to determine of effect of word meaning on the frequency of dysfluency in adult with developmental Stuttering. Materials and Methods: This cross- sectional descriptive- analytic study was performed on 14 adults who stutter (12 males and 2 females) with a mean age of 24.93 years. The frequency of dysfluency was evaluated in reading two lists, containing 60 words and 60 non- words. The words were selected based on various Persian syllable structures. The obtained data were statistically analyzed through paired t-test using SPSS software. Results: The results of this study showed that there was significant difference between the frequency of dysfluency in word and non-word lists (p<0.05). Conclusion: The findings of this study indicate a significant increase in frequency of dysfluency on non- words than on real words. According to the results, it seem that the phonological encoding process of non- word reading must be much more complex than for word reading. Because in non- word reading, the component of semantic content retrieval (word meaning) is missing when compared to word reading. Keywords: Developmental stuttering, adult, non-word, word meaning