Pauses and hesitations in speech of adults with and without stuttering

Abstract

Background: Stuttering is a neurodevelopmental disorder and its main manifestation is the excess of stuttering like-disfluencies. Disfluencies such as pauses occur in the speech of stutterers and non-stutters. Objective: To analyze and compare pauses and hesitative pauses in the speech of adults with stuttering and fluent adults. Method: The participants will be 30 adults, divided in:Research Group (RG), composed of 15 adults with stuttering, and Control Group (CG), composed of 15 fluent adults. The procedures were: fluency assessment, analysis of the spontaneous speech sample and characterization of typologies of disfluencies, analysis of pauses and hesitative pauses, which included: frequency, duration and position in sentences and application of the Stuttering Severity Instrument. Results: Adults with stuttering had longer duration and frequency of pauses than fluent adults. The groups were similar for the duration and frequency of the hesitative pauses. In the comparison between the groups in relation to the positions of the pauses in the sentences, there was a significant difference for the initial and medial position. No pauses in final position were observed for both groups. However, fluent adults presented a higher frequency of hesitative pauses in final position when compared to adults with stuttering. Conclusion: The quantitative analysis of the pauses showed that there are relevant differences between adults with and without stuttering, which will provide the diagnosis and more appropriate therapy.