Stuttered and non-stuttered disfluencies in normally fluent, French-speaking preschool children

The criterion of 3% of stuttered disfluencies – (part-)word repetitions, sound prolongations and blocks – is often suggested to diagnose the stuttering in children (e.g., Boey et al., 2007; Yairi & Ambrose, 2005). There is a long-lasting debate among scholars about the relevance of considering monosyllabic word repetitions as stuttered disfluencies, given their high frequency in typically developing children (e.g., Howell, 2013; Wingate, 2001). Yet, these are the prime characteristics that prompt identification of early stuttering by parents (Yairi & Ambrose, 2013). Nevertheless, very few normative data exist concerning the disfluencies occurring in the speech of normally fluent children (Tumanova et al., 2014), and none exist in French. The aim of this study is to examine the need for reference data in French in order to distinguish typical developmental disfluency from stuttering.
We used the CHAT transcription system and the coding conventions of FluencyBank to transcribe and analyse the speech disfluencies of twenty monolingual, French speaking children who do not stutter, aged 4 years. FluencyBank (Bernstein-Ratner & MacWhinney) is a shared database for the study of the development of fluency in both normal and disordered populations. It is a project of Talkbank that seeks to archive and facilitate sharing of data relevant to fluency research.