A preliminary investigation of stutteringand typical disfluencies in bilingual Polish‑English adults who stutter: A multiple cases approach

Abstract

This study analyzes the frequency of stuttering and typical disfluencies in Polish‑English bilingual adults who stutter during cross‑linguistic dialogue, monologue, and oral reading contexts. Additionally, the relationship between English proficiency and stuttering and typical disfluency frequencies was examined. The study aims to contribute to the body of research regarding differential considerations between monolingual and bilinguals who stutter. Data collection took place via video conferencing. Participants first completed an English proficiency cloze test, where they entered missing words in a short English text. Following this, randomized dialogue, monologue, and oral reading speech samples in Polish and English were collected. The correlation between cloze test scores and frequency of stuttering and typical disfluency in the English samples was also examined. All participants experienced more stuttering in English (L2) than Polish (L1) during dialogue. Overall, participants had increased stuttering in L2 for at least one speaking task. Seventy one percent of participants had increased typical disfluencies in L2 for dialogue and monologue. Most participants evidenced an increase in stuttering and typical disfluencies in L2 compared to L1. The results suggest that language proficiency may share a relationship between frequency of stuttering and typical disfluencies, highlighting the importance of collecting cross‑linguistic speech data during assessment to reach clinical decisions related to fluency disorders in bilingual populations.

Keywords

• stuttering
• fluency
• bilingualism
• dysfluency
• language