Frequency of Stuttering and Its Common Symptomsamong Children with Speech Disorders

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Stuttering also known as stammering is a speech disorder which disrupts the normal flow of speech by frequent and involuntary repetition, prolongations of sounds, syllables, words or phrases. It also involves involuntary silent or audible pauses or blocks in which the person with stutteringis unable to produce any sounds. OBJECTIVE: To determine the frequency of stuttering and its common symptoms among children with speech disorders and to determine the frequency of stuttering in males and females. METHODOLOGY: This cross sectional study was conducted at Department of Developmental Paediatrics, The Children's Hospital and Institute of Child Health, Lahore from October 2012 to December 2012. The number ofpatients with speech disorders was 100 who were evaluated for stuttering through simple convenient sampling technique. All patients with speech sound disorders, fluency disorders, voice disorders from age range 5 to 17 years were included. A questionnaire was developed through expert opinion and literature review to conduct this study. The all results were analyzed by using SPSS. RESULTS: Out of 100 patient 24 (24%) patients was presented with stuttering while 76 (76%) patients had other speech disorder. Among 24 patients of stuttering, 16 (66.67%) were male and 8 (33.33%) were females, 19 (79.17%) patients had repetition, 21 (87.5%) had blocks, and 21 (87.5%) patients had physical tension. CONCLUSION: The results of this study showed there are a significant number of patients with stuttering among other speech disorders and males are more prone to this disorder. The frequency of symptoms showed that common symptoms of stuttering are blocks, physical tension and repetition. KEY WORDS: Stuttering, Repetition, DSM, Dysfluency.