Segmental transition of the first syllables of words in Japanese children who stutter: Comparison between word and sentence production

ABSTRACT

Matsumoto-Shimamori, Ito, Fukuda, & Fukuda (2011) proposed the hypothesis that in Japanese, the transition from the core vowels (i.e. syllable nucleus) of the first syllables of words to the following segments affected the occurrence of stuttering. Moreover, in this transition position, an inter-syllabic transition precipitated more stuttering than an intra-syllabic one (Shimamori & Ito, 2007, 2008). However, these studies have only used word production tasks. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the same results could be obtained in sentence production tasks. Participants were 28 Japanese school-age children who stutter, ranging in age from 7;3 to 12;7. The frequency of stuttering on words with an inter-syllabic transition was significantly higher than on those having an intra-syllabic transition, not only in isolated words but in the first words of sentences. These results suggested that Matsumoto et al.’s hypothesis could be applicable to the results of sentence production tasks.

KEYWORDS:

• Japanese
• stuttering
• transition
• word
• sentence

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the 28 children and to the parents and teachers of the speech and hearing classes of elementary schools in Kita-ku, Koganei-shi, and Nishitokyo-shi of Tokyo, Japan.

Funding

This research was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows (15J40208).

Declaration of interest

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

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows (15J40208).