Comparison of Syntax Comprehension and Production Performances between 4-9 Years-old Children in Stutter and Typically Developing Children

Many theories have been raised about the relationship between stuttering and language development. Some researchers have studied the effect of linguistic factors in stuttering. The aim of the present investigation was to compare syntactic features of receptive and expressive languages between children who stutter and normal children. The present study is a case-control study. Participants included 21 stutter and 21 non-stutter children aged 4 to 9 years. The evaluation of syntactic features in the two groups was done using the Syntax section of Test of Language Development (TOLD). Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used to verify the normality of the data. After confirmation of the normality of the data, independent t-test was used to compare the sub-tests measured between stuttering and non- stuttering groups. The value of p<0.05 was considered significant. The mean standard scores in grammatical understanding subtest between the two groups were similar and showed no significant difference. However, the mean of standard scores in sentence imitation and grammatical completion subtests between two groups were significantly different (p ≤ 0/005). According to the results of this study, children who stutter have lower expression language than normal children. This finding is corresponded with this fact that language proficiency level is effective on the incidence of stuttering.