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Re: Are Bilingual Children more likely to Stutter and risk factors

From: Jean Sawyer
Date: 06 Oct 2011
Time: 15:26:32 -0500
Remote Name: 138.87.171.39

Comments

Hi Jon, There have not been very many carefully designed studies of bilingualism and stuttering. Your question is intriguing, as quite probably, more people are bilingual than monolingual, so there are more bilinguals than monolinguals who stutter. The Howell, Davis, and Williams study you mention, as well as other studies on bilingualism, have some methodological and reporting deficiencies, so we do not have a clear picture about whether bilingualism is a risk factor for stuttering. Patricia Robers and Rosalee Shenker have written a nice chapter about assessment and treatment of bilingual speakers in Stuttering and Related Disorders of Fluency, edited by Curlee and Conture (2007). In this chapter, they cite research that points to no increased risk of stuttering for bilingual speakers. There is little good research on whether continuing to speak a second language to a child will tax fluency, so it is not known whether parents should be counseled to speak to the child in only one language. The authors recommend treatment in the language that the clinician and client have in common, so it is probably not necessary to have a bilingual clinician or two clinicians. All in all, we don't have many definitive answers about bilingualism and stuttering.


Last changed: 10/22/11