stuttering

[Elena Lieven]

I also think that, as Nan says, this is a very typical age of onset and 
may be a temporary phenomenon related to children's move from a 
relatively greater emphasis on semi-formulaic and easily produced 
utterances to a more abstract and complex grammatical system.  My 
impression is that there is more disfluency in our 3-year-old data than 
in our 2-year-olds though it's not straightforward to separate 
increasing syntactic complexity from increasing utterance length - if 
indeed it makes sense to make this a clear distinction.

elena lieven

Nan Ratner wrote:

>Stuttering usually has its onset at the time you mention; 80% of it goes
>away without intervention, although both families and children may be
>disturbed by its features before it goes away. Risk factors for
>continued stuttering include a family history of chronic stuttering. If
>you provide me with a location for the child, I may be able to refer to
>a good clinic that can evaluate the child and provide concrete
>recommendations for things that can be done to help the child. A
>technical book on early stuttering is the recent book by Ehud Yairi and
>Nicoline Ambrose; there are may other more consumer-oriented materials
>at the Stuttering Foundation of America website, and a wealth of
>information (not always carefully sorted, but usually quite reliable, as
>the site is run by a knowledgable speech-language pathologist) at the
>StutteringHomePage.com
>
>This is an area I work in, so if the family is still concerned after
>looking at these materials, or does want a referral (the Michael Palin
>Centre in London is excellent, and probably can make a more local
>referral), I am happy to chat off-list.
>
>Regards,
>Nan Bernstein Ratner
>(co-author of the in-press Handbook on Stuttering, sixth edition,
>Thomson-Delmar)
>
>
>
>Nan Bernstein Ratner, Professor and Chairman
>Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences
>0100 Lefrak Hall
>University of Maryland
>College Park, MD 20742
>nratner at hesp.umd.edu
>http://www.bsos.umd.edu/hesp/facultyStaff/ratnern.htm
>301-405-4213
>301-314-2023 (fax)
>
>
>  
>