Comparison of the Speed of Naming in 7-8 years old Children with and without stuttering

Abstract

Background and Aim: Stuttering is one of the most current speech disorders, which is marked by sudden occurring, alternate and abnormal interruptions in the natural flow of speech. It also has consequences such as behavioral, cognitive and attitude changes in the patient. The main aim of this study was to compare and analyze the speed of naming in 7-8 year old children with and without stuttering. Materials and Methods: This cross sectional study was conducted on 36 children with and without stuttering. The case group (n=18) was recruited from the admitted patients inTehran’s speech therapy clinics. Matched sampling of control group (n=18) was done considering the criteria of age, sex, and being monolingual in Persian. In order to do this research, 4 sub-scales were used: pictures, colors, numbers and alphabetic letters and the results were recorded according to the responses of the participants in terms of speech reaction time (SRT) in naming speed task. Results: The outcome showed that there is a significant difference in naming speed at all sub-scales (p<0.001) between the case and control groups. We also found out that the speech reaction times between the two groups were different in numbers in telling the numbers, alphabetic letters, colors and pictures respectively. Conclusion: According to research findings, the speech reaction times in stuttering children was slower in all the 4 sub-scales, and it was slowest in the pictures task subscale compared to the other subscales. Keywords: Stuttering, children, Naming speed, Speech reaction time