Abstract:
Breaks or disruptions that occur in the flow of speech are labeled as "disfluencies.” In the school-aged population, students may present with a variety of disfluency types and require assessment by a speech-language pathologist (SLP) to determine if there is a negative impact on communication. Fluency disorders consist of stuttering, cluttering, and other disfluencies, including atypical disfluencies, which are the least studied in the literature. Such fluency disorders can be present alone or concomitant with another diagnosis such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), which makes the assessment process significantly more complex. Previous studies have examined the types of disfluencies found in the ASD population but have not yet investigated all five components that are associated with fluency disorders including the cognitive, affective, linguistic, motor, and social areas. The current study aimed to identify the types of disfluencies found in four school-aged males with ASD in addition to obtain quantifiable ratings for the impact of disfluencies on the five components using the CALMS assessment.