Türkçe Konuşan Kekeme Olan ve Olmayan Okul Öncesi Çocuklarda Sözcük Türüne Göre Konuşma Akıcılığının Araştırılması

Abstract

In this study, it is aimed to investigate the effect of word type on speech fluency of Turkish speaking pre-school children who do and do not stutter. With this purpose, hearing screening test, Turkish Expressive and Receptive Language (TIFALDI) Test, Ankara Articulation Test (AAT) were carried out with 42 children whose ages were ranged between 3 and 6 years, in Hacettepe University Department of Audiology and Speech Disorders. All participants? conversation were videotaped while playing with one of their parents in a play room for approximately 30 minutes in order to analyze their speech. In the result of these speech analyses, disfluency ratios of total, content words, function words, within words and between words of all participants were assessed for both between and within words. It is found that language skills of non-stuttering children had significantly higher scores on both expressive and receptive language tests than children who stutter. According to the statistical analyses of speech analyses, results show that both stuttering and non-stuttering children had significantly more disfluency in content words than in function words. Moreover, regarding the results of the current study, it is found that whereas children who stutter have significantly more disfluency for within words than non-stuttering children, children who do not stutter had significantly more disfluency for between words than children who stutter. Speech fluency according to word types of pre-school children who do and do not stutter was examined in the current study. Results of the current study was found to be contradictory compared with the results of the previous studies. These results were discussed by taking different characteristics of Turkish and Western languages into consideration.