Nonword repetition ability of children who do and do not stutter and covert repair hypothesis

Context: Stuttering has a life span incidence and it significantly impacts academic, social, emotional and vocational achievements of patients who stutter. Aims: The purpose of the present study was to examine phonological encoding in young children who stutter (CWS) during a nonword repetition task and to test the covert repair hypothesis (CRH) and phonological skills in Persian native children. Setting and Design: The study was conducted among 12 CWS and 12 children who do not stutter (CWNS) between the ages of 5.1 and 7.10 at the rehabilitation clinics in Tehran. Materials and Methods: A list of 40 bisyllabic and trisyllabic nonwords was used in a nonword repetition task to collect information about the following dependent variables: (a) reaction times (RTs), (b) the number of phonological errors (PEs) and (c) nonword length. Data Analysis: An independent sample T-test was performed to compare means of PEs and RTs between the two groups and a paired t-test for analysis of nonword length impacts. Results: Results indicated that the CWS had a slightly poor performance than CWNS but there was no significant difference between the groups. Also, the differences between bisyllabic and trisyllabic nonwords were significant for phonological errors but not for reaction times. Conclusion: In general, it is concluded that CWS might not have a gross problem in phonological retrieval of the novel phonological context even with increase in syllable length. Also, some predictions of CRH were not supported by this research. However, further research into this possibility may shed light on the emergence and characteristics of childhood stuttering.