The potential usage of language skills for predicting recovery from persistent group in Korean speaking children who stutter

Objectives: Predicting the prognosis of children who stutter during early childhood is critical. Thus, it is of practical and theoretical interest to identify who will recover from stuttering and who will not, yet this is not an easy task due to overlapping surface similarities between these two groups. We investigated whether language skills at the initial visit can predict 18-month outcomes of stuttering severity. We examined both semantic and syntactic profiles that represent cross-linguistic features of Korean. Methods: A longitudinal study obtained children's language skills, such as number of different words (NDW), mean length of C-unit in word (MLC-w), the number of case markers, and the number of connective endings across time periods (initial visit vs. 18 months later). Children received both indirect and direct therapy. A repeated one-way ANOVA, Spearman non-parametric correlation analysis and multiple stepwise regression analysis were used to explore the language predictors that can discriminate between groups. Results: Different linguistic profiles were found between groups. The persistent group performed poorly on language variables at the initial visit, even though they all caught up in 18 months, with the exception of the use of case markers. Qualitative analysis showed different tendencies between groups. It was the number of case markers predicting later stuttering severity level in the persistent group and connective ending was the predictor in the recovered group. Conclusion: Results are discussed in terms of how initial language skills can disentangle children who will recover and persist. Cross-linguistic features important to consider when explaining these results are also highlighted. Additional research on language profile in children who stutter is suggested.