Investigations on relationships among communicative attitude, linguistic proficiency and severity in a sample of pre-school children who stutter

It is known that communicative attitude (CA) tends to be more negative in children who stutter (CWS) compared to their non-stuttering peers starting in preschool age and that a negative CA can be associated with other linguistic disorders. This study aims to investigate possible correlations among stuttering severity, communicative attitude, and speech and language proficiency in CWS. It is further assumed that CWS could develop a negative CA not only because of fluency problems but as a result of other speech and language difficulties they might have. The study involved 16 CWS (age range: 4;0 - 6;11). The BVL 4-12 was used in order to assess CWS for language and speech skills, and the KiddyCAT for their speech-associated attitude. Results showed a substantial similarity between the speech and language skills of CWS and the normative sample, with the possible exception of the task of articulation (in the naming test) and the repetition task (in the non-word, word, and phrase repetition tests). No significant correlations were found between CA and stuttering severity nor between CA and speech and language skills