Disfluency characteristics of nonstuttering children and children with attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder

The purpose of this,study was to compare the frequency and type of disfluencies elicited by children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Typically Developing children (TD). Fourteen children age 7-6 to 10-6 years old were analyzed for disfluencies on an Original Story Telling Task (GST) and a Story Telling Task with Pictures (ST-P) tasks. Conture's within-word and between-word classification system was used to identify and tabulate the frequency and type of disfluencies. The following research questions were asked: (1) Are children with ADHD more disfluent than their TD peers? (2) Are the Disfluencies elicited by children with ADHD qualitatively different from those elicited by the TD children? (3) Are the type and frequency of disfluencies produced on the Original Story Telling Task (OST) different from, those produced on the Story Telling Task with Pictures (ST-P)? A four way ANOVA was utilized to answer all research questions and the Wilk's Lambda analysis was used to determine significant differences. Analysis indicated there were significant differences between the TD and ADHD participants for percent and type of disfluencies. The participants with ADHD were significantly more disfluent than the TD participants (p=0.046). Disfluencies were identified by type using Conture (1990) classification system. Results indicated that there was a significant difference between the type of disfluencies for children with ADHD compared to TD children (p=0.023). Overall the two groups (ADHD and TD) exhibited significantly more Normal Disfluencies (mean-3.5%) than Stuttered Disfluencies (mean=2.2%). Overall the ADHD participants were more disfluent that the TD participants, but the story telling task did not appear to affect the disfluencies for either group. Thus indicating that there was not a significant task effect for either group. The difference between the mean percent of disfluencies on the GST and the ST-P for the TD participants was 0.118% and for the participants with ADHD the mean difference was 0.506%. This difference was not significant.