Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, Volume 39, 349-364, April 1996 Stuttering and Phonological Disorders in Children: Examination of the Covert Repair Hypothesis J. Scott Yaruss Northwestern University Evanston, IL Edward G. Conture Syracuse University Syracuse, NY The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether the Covert Repair Hypothesis (CRH; Postma & Kolk, 1993), a theory designed to account for the occurrence of speech disfluencies in adults who stutter, can also account for selected speech characteristics of children who stutter and demonstrate disordered phonology. Subjects were 9 boys who stutter and exhibit normal phonology (S + NP; mean age = 61.33 months; SD = 10.16 months) and 9 boys who stutter and exhibit disordered phonology (S + DP; mean age = 59.11 months; SD = 9.37 months). Selected aspects of each child's speech fluency and phonology were analyzed on the basis of an audio/videotaped picture-naming task and a 30-min conversational interaction with his mother. Results indicated that S + NP and S + DP children are generally comparable in terms of their basic speech disfluency, nonsystematic speech error, and self-repair behaviors. CRH predictions that utterances produced with faster articulatory speaking rates or shorter response time latencies are more likely to contain speech errors or speech disfluencies were not supported. CRH predictions regarding the co-occurrence of speech disfluencies and speech errors were supported for nonsystematic ("slip-of-the-tongue"), but not for systematic (phonological process/rule-based), speech errors. Furthermore, neither S + NP nor S + DP subjects repaired their systematic speech errors during conversational speech, suggesting that systematic deviations from adult forms may not represent true "errors," at least for some children exhibiting phonological processes. Findings suggest that speech disfluencies may not represent by-products of self-repairs of systematic speech errors produced during conversa- tional speech, but that self-repairs of nonsystematic speech errors may be related to children's production of speech disfluencies. KEY WORDS: stuttering, phonology, speech errors, self-repairs, phonological processes Considerable evidence indicates that children who stutter are more likely than children who do not stutter to demonstrate concomitant phonological concerns (e.g., Bloodstein, 1995; St. Louis & Hinzman, 1988; Wolk, Conture, & Edwards, 1990). Although Nippold (1990) has raised valid concerns about the methodology of certain studies on the co-occurrence of stuttering and various speech and language disorders, Wolk et al. (1990) presented a detailed review of studies on the co-occurrence of stuttering and articulation or phonological disorders in children and demonstrated that, on average, approximately 30%-40% of children who stutter also exhibit disordered articulation or phonology-considerably more than the 2%-6% found in the general population (Beitchman, Nair, Clegg, & Patel, 1986). More specifically, in a descriptive study comparing 30 children who stutter and 30 children who do not stutter, Louko, Edwards, and Conture (1990) found that children who stutter produced a greater number and variety of phonological processes (i.e., systematic or rule-governed sound changes affecting sequences or classes of © 1996, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association 349 0022-4685/96/39020349 Downloaded From: http://jslhr.pubs.asha.org/ by Vanderbilt University - Library, Peri Rcvng, Edward Conture on 04/08/2015 Terms of Use: http://pubs.asha.org/ss/Rights_and_Permissions.aspx