The influence of phonetic complexity on stuttered speech.

The primary purpose of this study was to re-examine the influence of phonetic complexity on stuttering in young children through the use of the Word Complexity Measure (WCM). Parent-child conversations were transcribed for 14 children who stutter (mean age = 3 years, 7 months; SD = 11.20 months). Lexical and linguistic factors were accounted for during the analysis. Results indicate that phonetic complexity, as measured by WCM, did not exhibit a significant influence on the likelihood of stuttering. Findings support previous data that suggest stuttering in preschool-age children does not appear significantly related to phonetic complexity of the production.