Stuttering and African Americans (fwd)

[Adelaida Restrepo]

>From my colleague here at UGA.

From: Anne Cordes Bothe <abothe at coe.uga.edu>
Subject: Re: Stuttering and African Americans (fwd)


There are many reports of variations in the prevalence and incidence of
stuttering that attribute this variation to different ethnic and/or
cultural backgrounds.  The problem in interpreting any of these reports is
that there is a huge amount of variation among ALL reports of the
prevalence and incidence of stuttering -- i.e., Bloodstein's tables list
prevalence estimates between 0.30% and 2.12%, all for groups described as
"American school children."  The more you dig into this literature, the
more you find major differences in methodology that probably have more
influence on the results than any other factor -- i.e., observer bias,
questionnaire design, survey vs. speech samples, definition of
"stuttering", etc. I think the general "sense" that people seem to have of
relatively high stuttering among persons of African American descent
probably comes from one of two places.  First, there are a few old reports
of high prevalence rates among speakers in Nigeria and in West Africa --
see Cooper & Cooper's chapter on stuttering in Battle's book
("Communication disorders in multicultural populations"  -- I have 1993,
though isn't there a new edition?).  Those are "balanced,"  however, by a
report of very low stuttering prevalence among the Bantu in South Africa
(Aron, 1962, JSHD, 27, 116-128).  Second, there were several decades in
the history of stuttering research when the family's "upward mobility" or
"social class" was considered to be relevant, so a series of studies
compared African American vs. white children with some of those quaint
little social stereotypes in mind -- and several reports claimed that
African American children stuttered more, but there were probably an equal
number that found no difference.  Van Riper's pretty classic conclusion
(in "The Nature of Stuttering") was that the common belief of more
stuttering among African Americans is not supported by the data.

Sources: I'd recommend Van Riper's (1971/1982) prevalence chapter (in "The
Nature of Stuttering"), and I'd recommend the Cooper and Cooper chapter I
cited above -- especially their conclusion that cultural factors are not
enough to explain stuttering, which is clearly a universal problem among
speakers of all languages, ethnicities, etc.  The "Bloodstein" book that I
referred to above is one of our classic sources for references in
stuttering ("A Handbook on Stuttering" -- the most current edition is
1995, from Singular).  Finn and Cordes (1997, Journal of Fluency
Disorders, 22, 219-236) also did a nice little review of multicultural
issues in stuttering (if I do say so myself....  :).

Hope that helps -- of course the answer is that nothing is ever as simple
as we would like....


Anne

*********************************************
Anne Cordes Bothe, Ph.D., CCC-SLP
Associate Professor and Graduate Coordinator
Dept. of Communication Sciences and Disorders
556 Aderhold Hall
The University of Georgia
Athens, GA  30602
(706) 542-0436; fax (706) 542-5348
*********************************************


> We are completing a study on prevalence of stuttering among African
> American preschoolers. I have often heard that there is a higher prevalence
> for stuttering in African American males than other populations and have
> had this reported to me by other SLPs. However, I cannot find data to
> substantiate this apparent clinical observation . Does anyone know of
> specific references where this is printed? thanks, Adele
>
> Adele Proctor, Sc.D.                                    217.244.2554 (Office)
> Associate Professor                                     217.244.2235 (Fax)
> Department of Speech & Hearing Science          217.244.9073 (TTY)
> University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign              aproctor at uiuc.edu
> 901 South Sixth Street
> Champaign, Illinois 61820
>
>
>
>