ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on developmental stuttering, a fluency disorder that is affected by psycholinguistic and speech-motor factors. Stuttered speech has been described as consisting of relatively fluent episodes of speech interspersed with dysfluent events. According to Johnson and associates (1959), the main dysfluent events are: (1) interjections (silent or filled pauses), (2) word repetitions, (3) phrase repetitions, (4) part-word repetitions, (5) prolongations, (6) broken words, (7) incomplete phrases (abandonments), and (8) revisions. Only the first six events are consistent with the ICD-10 definition (World Health Organization. 1992), which maintains that speakers know what they wish to say but are unable to do so. None of these six categories includes an overt speech error. For this reason, our model does not assume fluency problems are linked with speech errors.
