초등학교 저학년 말더듬 아동의 구문능력과 외현적/주관적 말더듬 중증도, 의사소통태도, 상태불안 간의 상관

Abstract

The occurrence of stuttering is associated with the explosive period of language development. It suggests that stuttering can be deeply related to the formation of linguistic structures and language use in the process of language development. Syntax expression ability keeps developing until late adolescence. In the case of school-age children, the length of sentences is longer than before and the use of compound sentences is increased due to the development of dependent clauses. Based on this, some studies have interpreted that school-age children who stutter(school-age CWS) tend to speak shortly and simply when they speak. Also it can be related to stuttering characteristics. Therefore, this study examined to syntactic expression ability and how it is related to the stuttering characteristics in school-age CWS. This study shows three purposes: (1) To know the difference of syntactic ability between the school-age CWS and CWNS(children who do not stutter), (2) To see the correlation among syntactic ability, overt/subjective stuttering severity, communication attitudes and state anxiety of school-age CWS, (3) To see the correlation among syntactic ability, communication attitudes and state anxiety of school-age CWNS. Participants were six school-age CWS and six CWNS. Their age is between first and second grade in elementary school. In addition, they had the same chronological age and syntactic ability. For syntactic ability, the speech sample of children during story-retelling task from P-FA-Ⅱ were collected. Mean Length of Communication-units word(MLC-w) and Mean Number of Clause(MNC) were used to measure length of utterance and syntax complexity. To measure the overt stuttering severity of CWS, the ratio of abnormal disfluency(AD ratio) from P-FA-Ⅱ was used and the subjective stuttering severity was measured through 10cm-visual analog scale(VAS) by dividing into two categories: overall subjective stuttering severity and task-related subjective stuttering severity. To measure the communication attitudes of children, the Communication Attitudes Test-Revised(CAT-R) was used and the speech-related state anxiety was measured through the Speech Situation Checklist-Emotional Reaction(SSC-ER). This study concludes three results: (1) there was no significant difference between school-age CWS and CWNS in syntactic ability(MLC-w, MNC), (2) a significant negative correlation was found between MLC-w and task-related subjective stuttering severity(ρ=-.829, p<.05). There was no significant correlation among MLC-w and overt stuttering severity, overall subjective stuttering severity, communication attitude, and state anxiety of CWS. Also, there was no significant correlation among MNC and overt stuttering severity, overall subjective stuttering severity, task-related subjective stuttering severity, communication attitude, and state anxiety of CWS. Furthermore, this study was investigated whether there was a correlation between the syntactic ability and the subjective stuttering severity measured immediately after performing the story-retelling task of CWS. As a result, it was founded that there was a significant negative correlation between the syntactic ability(MLC-w, MNC) and the subjective stuttering severity measured immediately after performing the story-retelling task of CWS(ρ=-.943, p<.01 ; ρ=-.928, p<.01), (3) there was no significant correlation among syntactic ability(MLC-w, MNC), communication attitude, and state anxiety of CWNS. This study investigated that there was no significant difference between syntax expression ability of school-age CWS and CWNS. In addition, it was indicated that there was a significant relationship between the syntactic ability and the subjective stuttering severity(measured after the story-retelling task) of CWS. Based on the results of this study, it needs to consider the subjective stuttering severity in verbal communication situation to understand the syntax expression ability of school-age CWS.