Event Date and Time
-
Location
MOR1101

Honors Thesis Defense

Speaker: Seetal Ahluwalia 

Title: Disfluency ≠ Stuttering. Analysis of Language Proficiency Effects on Fluency

Abstract: 

Language proficiency is hypothesized to impact bilingual speakers’ levels of typical and stuttering-like disfluency. The current study examined the relationship between English language exposure before school age and bilingual children’s speech fluency during an English task. The sample included 33 Spanish-English bilingual children from the English-MiamiBiling corpus at CHILDES. Participants were asked to narrate Mayer’s (1969) wordless picture book, Frog, Where Are You? It was hypothesized that OSH (Only Spanish at Home) children would be more disfluent than their ESH (English and Spanish at Home) peers. It was found that the children with only Spanish in the home had an increased number of typical disfluencies than ESH peers. However, the number of stuttering-like disfluencies and total disfluency was similar between groups.
Seetal Ahluwalia