DEVELOPMENT OF PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS OF STUTTERING CHILDREN AND CHILDREN WITH FLUENT SPEECH

Abstract

The aim of this study was to determine characteristics of phonological awareness of stuttering children and children with fluent speech. The sample consisted of 64 children, between 56 and 83 months old (4 years and 8 months to 6 years and 11 months). Examinees were divided in two groups. The first group consisted of 32 stuttering children, 19 males, and 13 females. The control group consisted of 32 children with fluent speech, whose age and sex were equal to the age and sex of the children in the experimental group. The research was conducted in preschools and primary schools in Tuzla and Una-Sana Canton in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The subjects were examined with 7 subtests (syllable and phoneme blending abilities, ability to rhyme, phoneme segmentation, phoneme deletion, phoneme transposition and spoonerisms). Each of the subtest scores, which index a variety of phonological awareness abilities, was examined separately. Phonological awareness score is the total score which relates to a common result that the subjects achieved on these 7 individual subtests. The results showed that there were no statistically significant differences between stuttering children and their peers with fluent speech in relation to Phonological awareness score. The examination of differences between stuttering and non-stuttering children in individual variables, which describe phonological awareness, showed that there was statistically significant difference in the ability to rhyme between these two subjects groups. T-test was used for examination of the differences between the male stuttering children and their fluent peers, and also female stuttering children and their fluent peers for the phonological awareness variables. The results exhibited statistically significant differences in the variable Rhyme between the male stuttering children and their fluent peers. In addition, we examined the ability of phonemic analysis of children who stutter and children with fluent speech. The results showed that there were not statistically significant differences between stuttering and nonstuttering children related to phonemic analysis abilities.