The transition from the core vowels to the following segments in Japanese children who stutter: The second, third and fourth syllables

Abstract

, Syllable weight and phonological encoding in Japanese children who stutter. Japanese Journal of Special Education, 44, 451–462; 2008, Syllable weight and frequency of stuttering: Comparison between children who stutter with and without a family history of stuttering. Japanese Journal of Special Education, 45, 437–445; 2009, Difference in frequency of stuttering between light and heavy syllables in the production of monosyllables: From the viewpoint of phonetic transition. The Japanese Journal of Logopedics and Phoniatrics, 50, 116–122 (in Japanese)) proposed the hypothesis that in Japanese the transition from the core vowels (CVs) to the following segments affected the occurrence of stuttering. However, the transition we investigated was in the first syllables only, and the effect of the transition in second, third and fourth syllables was not addressed. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the transition from the CVs in the second, third and fourth syllables affected the occurrence of stuttering. The participants were 21 Japanese children. A non-word naming task and a non-word reading task were used. The frequency of stuttering was not significantly different where the number of transitions from the CVs differed on either task. These results suggest that the transition from the CVs in the second, third and fourth syllables does not have a significant effect on the occurrence of stuttering in Japanese.

• stuttering
• transition
• syllables
• Japanese

Acknowledgements

We express our gratitude to the 21 children and the teachers of the speech and hearing classes of Hachioji Daiyon, Hoya, Kodaira Daini, Koganei Daini and Oji elementary schools in Tokyo, Japan.

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the contents and the writing of this paper.