Awareness and Attitude towards Stuttering Among Normal School Going Children

Abstract

Information on onset and development of awareness and attitudes towards stuttering in normally fluent children is an important step in understanding the development of stuttering. The present study investigated awareness and attitudes of Tamil speaking normal children towards stuttering. Specifically 180 children from 5-14 years (1st to 9th grade) participated in the study. Video speech samples of a child with stuttering and a fluent child were used to study awareness and attitude. The samples were played to the children and a set of 13 questions were asked individually to examine children's ability to identify, discriminate, self-identify, label, knowledge of cause and treatment of stuttering and their attitude towards stuttering. Analyses of the data revealed that awareness of stuttering is present in children as early as 5-6 years and accuracy in awareness develops as age increases. Overall children's attitude was negative towards dysfluent speaker. That is they preferred fluent speaker compared to a dysfluent speaker. These negative reactions of normal children may aggravate the speech problem in. children with stuttering. Speech-language pathologist should educate normal children to develop healthy attitude towards children with stuttering.