Assessment of Stuttering Severity in Arabic-Speaking Adolescents and Adults in Conversational and Narrative Contexts

Hassan, Eman S.; Fouad, Maria Alfons; Mohamed, Hanan AbdelRashed

doi:10.21608/ejentas.2025.307388.1773

Assessment of Stuttering Severity in Arabic-Speaking Adolescents and Adults in Conversational and Narrative Contexts

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ Phoniatrics department, Faculty of medicine , Assiut University, Egypt

² Phoniatric unit ENT departement faculty of medicin, Assuit university .Assiut , Egypt

10.21608/ejentas.2025.307388.1773

Abstract

Background: Stuttering is a speech fluency disorder characterized by variability. The frequency of the speaker's stuttering moments and duration varies significantly each day. Doctors are affected by this variability as the patient's stuttering moments in the clinic don't represent the whole stuttering experience. The highest variability is seen when the context changes from conversation to narration.
Objective: To assess stuttering severity in both narration and conversation in adolescents and adults to determine which situation is more stressful.
Methods: .The study was conducted on 50 adolescent and adult stutterers with age range (10-35). They were divided into two groups according to their age: adolescents (below 18y) and adults (equal and above 18). All patients were subjected to a protocol of speech assessment used in the Phoniatric Unit-Assiut University Hospital and measured the stuttering severity using the Stuttering Severity Instrument-3 Arabic version (A-SSI). Two speaking tasks were used: conversational and narrative tasks.
Results: There was a significant difference between stuttering severity during conversation and narration. The narration shows a higher total severity score than the conversation. There was no statistical significance in (A-SSI) data between adults and adolescents except in involuntary movements. It showed a higher score of involuntary movement in adults than in adolescents.
Conclusion: The Stuttering severity score was higher during narration than during conversation. Narrative context offers more stuttering than conversational context so that it can be used during diagnosis and measuring the treatment outcome.

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