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Biomedical subjects

E Yairi

Publications and source records attributed to E Yairi.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

Durational, proportionate, and absolute frequency characteristic of disfluencies: a longitudinal study regarding persistence and recovery.

The main objective of this study was to investigate developmental aspects of disfluencies over time as stuttering persists or ameliorates for 2 groups of preschool age children who stutter. Results indicated that the frequency, type, and duration of disfluencies remained relatively constant instead of increasing as expected in the persistent group over a 3-year period. In contrast, the recovered group's initially higher frequency of disfluency decreased over time, as did their number of repetition units and proportion of disrhythmic phonations, while the duration of silent intervals between repetition units and proportion of monosyllabic word repetitions increased.

Child↗
PubMed2001

The young child's awareness of stuttering-like disfluency.

The emergence of awareness of stuttering has been an important factor in theoretical and clinical considerations for early childhood stuttering. The present research program is aimed at studying the development of awareness of stuttering-like disfluency in normally fluent preschool and first-grade children using responses to video speech samples. A total of 79 children in five different age groups were asked to discriminate between the speech (fluent and disfluent) of two puppets, identify with the one who speaks like them, and evaluate the disfluent and fluent speech of the puppets. It was found that from age 3, children show evidence of awareness of the disfluency used in the study, but most children reached full awareness at age 5. Also, negative evaluation of disfluent speech is observed from age 4. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.

Attitude to Health↗
PubMed1999

Normative disfluency data for early childhood stuttering.

Although the past 50 years of research on early childhood stuttering and normal disfluency have produced vital information on the general features of disfluent speech behavior of young children, an adequate normative reference for early stuttering does not exist. The purpose of this report is to provide such reference and to provide a basis for clinical needs of differential diagnosis of stuttering from normal disfluency. Data are presented from 90 stuttering children ages 2 to 5 within 6 months of stuttering onset and from 54 age-matched normally fluent children. Means for disfluency types are presented. No significant differences were found for gender or for age. Stuttering-like disfluencies (SLD) did differ significantly for the stuttering and fluent groups, but other disfluencies (OD) did not. A weighted SLD is defined to further clarify differences between the groups. The pattern of disfluency types for normally fluent and for mild, moderate, and severe stuttering is presented. Stuttering is shown to be qualitatively as well as quantitatively different from normal disfluency even at the earliest stages of stuttering. Clinical and research implications are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

Early childhood stuttering I: persistency and recovery rates.

The divergent developmental course of stuttering with its two major paths, persistency and spontaneous (unaided) recovery, has been a focus of scientific attention because of its critical theoretical, research, and clinical perspectives. Issues concerning factors underlying persistency and recovery and their implications for early intervention have stirred considerable controversy among scientists. In light of the intense interest, the scarcity of direct essential epidemiological data concerning the magnitude of the two paths and the timing of recovery is problematic. Most past studies have used retrospective methodologies. The few longitudinal studies have been severely limited in scope or objective data. The purpose of the investigation reported herein is to study the pathognomonic course of stuttering during its first several years in early childhood with special reference to the occurrence of persistent and spontaneously recovered forms of the disorder. Employing longitudinal methodology with thorough, frequent periodic follow-up observations, multiple testing, and recording of extensive speech samples, 147 preschool children who stutter have been closely followed for several years from near the onset of stuttering. In this, the first of three related articles, we present findings regarding the current stuttering status of 84 of these children, who have been followed for a minimum of 4 years after their onset of stuttering. The data indicate continuous diminution in the frequency and severity of stuttering over time as many children progressed toward recovery. Our findings lead to conservative estimates of 74% overall recovery and 26% persistency rates. The process of reaching complete recovery varied in length among the children and was distributed over a period of 4 years after onset. Detailed analyses of phonological and language skills pertaining to differentiation of the developmental paths of children who persist and those who recover are presented in the two other articles in the series (E. P. Paden et al., 1999, and R. V. Watkins et al., 1999).

Age Factors↗
PubMed1999

Early childhood stuttering II: initial status of phonological abilities.

Research on the relation between stuttering and phonological/articulation deficits has been reported in the literature over several decades. Yet virtually none of these investigations has taken into account that "children who stutter" includes a large number who spontaneously recover within a few months or years after onset. Thus, little attention has been given to differences between the phonological abilities of children whose stuttering persists and those who recover. This investigation compares these two groups soon after stuttering onset, before it was possible to classify them as members of either group, on a number of phonological characteristics, including mean percentage of error, relative levels of severity of phonological impairment, error on specific phonological patterns, progress in development of key patterns, and the children's strategies for coping with unmastered patterns. The results indicate that the children whose stuttering would be persistent had poorer mean scores on each of our measures than did the children who would recover from stuttering. Both groups, however, showed progression in phonological development that followed the expected order, and they used typical strategies when patterns had not yet been acquired. The persistent group was moving more slowly, however, so phonological development was more delayed than in the children who would recover from stuttering. Our findings support the assumption that most previous studies probably have compared children with persistent stuttering to normally fluent children, and that those who recovered early were not considered differentially.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1999

Early childhood stuttering III: initial status of expressive language abilities.

This investigation evaluated the expressive language abilities of 84 preschool-age children who stuttered, 62 who recovered from stuttering, and 22 who persisted in stuttering. The participants were identical to those identified in E. Yairi and N. G. Ambrose (1999) and E. Paden, E. Yairi, and N. G. Ambrose (1999). A range of lexical, morphological, and syntactic measures--calculated from spontaneous language samples of approximately 250-300 utterances in length collected relatively near stuttering onset--were used to examine the children's expressive language skills. For the purpose of analysis and comparison to normative data, children were grouped into three age intervals, in terms of the age at which they entered the study (2- to 3-year-olds, 3- to 4-year-olds, and 4- to 5-year-olds). Findings revealed similarity in the expressive language abilities of children whose stuttering persisted as opposed to abated at all age intervals. In addition, persistent and recovered stutterers displayed expressive language abilities near or above developmental expectations, based on comparison with normative data, at all age intervals. Children who entered the study at the youngest age level consistently demonstrated expressive language abilities well above normative expectations; this pattern was found for both persistent and recovered groups. These findings provide relatively limited information to assist in the early differentiation of persistence in or recovery from stuttering, but they do shed light on theoretical issues regarding the nature and character of early stuttering and potential associations with language learning.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1999

A longitudinal investigation of speaking rate in preschool children who stutter.

Both clinical and theoretical interest in stuttering as a disorder of speech motor control has led to numerous investigations of speaking rate in people who stutter. The majority of these studies, however, has been conducted with adult and school-age groups. Most studies of preschoolers have included older children. Despite the ongoing theoretical and clinical focus on speaking rate in young children who stutter and their parents, no longitudinal or cross-sectional studies have been conducted to answer questions about the possible developmental link between stuttering and the rate of speech, or about differences in rate development between preschool children who stutter and normally fluent children. This investigation compared changes in articulatory rate over a period of 2 years in subgroups of preschool-age children who stutter and normally fluent children. Within the group of stuttering children, comparisons also were made between those who exhibited persistent stuttering and those who eventually recovered without intervention. Furthermore, the study compared two metrics of articulatory rate. Spontaneous speech samples, collected longitudinally over a 2-year period, were analyzed acoustically to determine speaking rate measured in number of syllables and phones per second. Results indicated no differences among the 3 groups when articulation rate was measured in syllables per second. Using the phones per second measure, however, significant group differences were found when comparing the control group to the recovered and persistent groups.

Adult↗
PubMed1997

Language production abilities of children whose stuttering persisted or recovered.

This study evaluated the language production capabilities of 32 young children whose stuttering followed divergent paths: one group whose stuttering persisted, one group who stuttered relatively briefly and recovered, and one group who stuttered for a longer period prior to recovery. Three indices of language production (mean length of utterance, number of different words, and number of total words) were obtained from spontaneous language samples. Measures of language production were calculated from samples collected at an initial visit near stuttering onset and at a one-year follow-up visit. Results revealed that the majority of the children who stuttered performed within the average range on these measures of language production. One child, a child whose stuttering persisted, consistently performed below the average range on all measures. Comparison of the three groups revealed greater variability, as well as atypical patterns of development, in the language production skills of children whose stuttering persisted. These findings suggest that although language production deficits do not appear to be widespread in children who stutter, examination of individual patterns of performance is central to clarifying the developmental relationship between language proficiency and the production of fluent speech.

Age of Onset↗
PubMed1997

The genetic basis of persistence and recovery in stuttering.

Although past research has provided evidence of a genetic component to the transmission of susceptibility to stuttering, the relationship between the genetic component to stuttering and persistence and recovery in the disorder has remained unclear. In an attempt to characterize this relationship, the immediate and extended families of 66 stuttering children were investigated to determine frequencies of cases of persistent and recovered stuttering. Pedigree analysis and segregation analysis were used to examine patterns of transmission. The following questions were investigated: 1. Is there a sex effect in recovery from stuttering? Here, we sought to test the hypothesis that females are more likely to recover than males, leading to the change in sex ratio from approximately 2:1 males to females close to onset of the disorder, to 4 or 5:1 in adulthood. 2. Is persistence/recovery in stuttering transmitted in families? If recovery/ persistence appears to be transmitted, (a) are recovered and persistent stuttering independent disorders?; (b) is recovery a genetically milder form of persistent stuttering?; or (c) is persistence/recovery transmitted independent of the primary susceptibility to stuttering? Results indicated sharply different sex ratios of persistent versus recovered stutterers in that recovery among females is more frequent than among males. It was found that recovery or persistence is indeed transmitted, and further, that recovery does not appear to be a genetically milder form of stuttering, nor do the two types of stuttering appear to be genetically independent disorders. Data are most consistent with the hypothesis that persistent and recovered stuttering possess a common genetic etiology, and that persistence is, in part, due to additional genetic factors. Segregation analyses supported these conclusions and provided statistical evidence for both a single major locus and polygenic component for persistent and recovered stuttering.

Child↗
PubMed1997

Children recovered from stuttering without formal treatment: perceptual assessment of speech normalcy.

Current evidence suggests that young children who recover from stuttering are essentially stutter-free. However, there is no evidence to indicate if their speech is perceptually indistinguishable from normally fluent peers or whether they retain perceptually unusual speech. One important example of recovery from stuttering is children who have recovered without receiving formal treatment. An investigation was conducted to determine if the speech of these children is perceptually different from the speech of children who have never stuttered. Speakers consisted of 10 preschool and early school-age children documented as recovered from stuttering without benefit of formal treatment. In a series of studies they were compared with 10 children who had never stuttered. Three groups of judges-sophisticated, unsophisticated, and experienced-were separately asked, using videotaped speech samples of the children, to decide which samples were from children who used to stutter. Results revealed that the children who recovered from stuttering were perceptually indistinguishable from the normal controls. The same result was obtained regardless of whether the samples were presented in paired-stimulus or single-stimulus mode. Two of the groups of judges were also instructed to rate the speech naturalness of the speech samples. The speakers were not distinguished on this measure either. Methodological issues and the implications of the findings are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1996

Genetics of stuttering: a critical review.

The fact that stuttering runs in families has been documented over a long period and has led to speculations and research about the role of a genetic component to this disorder. Although the genetic factor cannot be proved by familial aggregation and twin studies alone, such research has continued to provide support for a relationship between stuttering and genetics. The purposes of this article are to review and critique the research in this area. The article first assesses research methodologies that have been employed in familial studies of stuttering. It proceeds to review and critique incidence, twin, and aggregation studies. In addition, it includes sections on subgroups, genetic models of stuttering, and implications for future research as well as for clinical work. With a focus on improved methodology and recent findings, a current perspective on our knowledge of the genetic component to stuttering is provided. Among other conclusions, the article emphasizes that failure to consider epidemiologic factors has probably biased previous results regarding the genetics of stuttering. New preliminary data also appear to provide evidence that spontaneous recovery and chronicity are influenced by genetic factors. Generally, however, the review of incidence and twin studies, as well as of evidence for the various inheritance models, confirms previous conclusions about the interaction between genetic and environmental factors in stuttering.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1996

Phonological characteristics of children whose stuttering persisted or recovered.

Among children who stutter, more will be identified with articulation/phonological deficiencies than among normally fluent children of the same ages. Most current literature has focused on phonological differences between those children who stutter and those who do not. The present study examines early phonological differences between young children whose stuttering persisted and those who recovered from early stuttering. Thirty-six children, 12 whose stuttering persisted, 12 who recovered early, and 12 who recovered later, had been assessed by means of the Assessment of Phonological Processes--Revised (Hodson, 1986) soon after they were identified as exhibiting stuttering. After many months of longitudinal evaluation of their stuttering that led to their classification into the three groups, the early phonological assessments of these children were re-examined to identify differences. Overall mean percentage of error scores as well as error scores on specific phonological patterns showed that the persistent group differed significantly from normally fluent control subjects matched by age and sex. Scores of the two groups who recovered and their matched controls, however, did not differ significantly. Although poor phonological ability in the early stage of stuttering appears to be a contributing factor to the differentiation of persistence and recovery, the wide individual variations in scores within groups suggest that additional factors are necessary for reliable prediction.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1994

Relation between phonologic difficulty and the occurrence of disfluences in the early stage of stuttering.

People who stutter, especially children, have often been reported to exhibit a wide range of concomitant communication problems including articulation and phonologic deficiencies. This study investigated the relation between the phonologic difficulty of words and the point at which stuttering-like disfluencies occurred in the speech of preschool children identified as having a stuttering problem (n = 24). The children were divided into subgroups according to stuttering severity and phonologic ability. A spontaneous speech sample of approximately 1,000 words was tape-recorded from each child, and perceived disfluencies were identified. The phonologic difficulty of each word on which there was a stuttering-like disfluency and of each fluent word immediately following such a disfluency was categorized. The proportion of words in each child's speech sample that contained each category of phonologic difficulty was determined. The data showed that the proportion of disfluent and immediately following words in each type of phonologic difficulty closely resembled the proportion of words in the speech sample of the same type of difficulty. There were no significant differences between the subgroups of stutterers. We concluded, therefore, that the phonologic difficulty of the disfluent word, and the fluent word following it, did not contribute to fluency breakdown regardless of the children's stuttering severity or phonologic ability.

Age of Onset↗
PubMed1994

Temporal dynamics of repetitions during the early stage of childhood stuttering: an acoustic study.

The purpose of this study was to compare duration characteristics of single-syllable whole-word repetitions (with one and two repeated units) and part-word repetitions (with one repeated unit) in the speech of preschool children who stutter (N = 20) recorded near the onset of their stuttering to those of control nonstuttering children (N = 20). Disfluent episodes were identified in audiotape recordings of the subjects' conversational speech. The digitized signals were analyzed by means of the CSpeech computer software (Milenkovic, 1987). Using visual displays of sound spectrograms, the durations of the spoken repetition unit(s), the silent interval(s) between the units, and the total disfluency were measured. The stutters exhibited shorter silent intervals between spoken repetition units. The duration of the spoken repetition units was very similar for the two groups of children. The total duration of the stutterers' disfluencies was significantly shorter because of their shorter silent intervals when compared to disfluencies of equal repetition units produced by the control subjects. Statistical analysis revealed that silent interval duration was capable of differentiating stuttering from normally fluent children with 72-87% accuracy, dependent upon the disfluency type. To the degree that the groups of subjects represented random samples of the two specified populations from which they were drawn, there appears to be an overall tendency for repetitions during the early stage of stuttering to be produced at a faster rate than repetitions produced by nonstuttering children.

Age Factors↗