The Relations of Stuttering to Word Length and Word Frequency

Twenty stutterers recorded nine 10-word lists in the presence of a single listener. The word lists were composed of combinations of three levels of word length and three levels of word frequency. An attempt was made to equate the word lists for stress of initial syllables, grammatical function, and initial sounds of words. The results agree with those of previous studies that have found a significantly greater frequency of stuttering to be associated with increases of word length and decreases of word frequency. However, the findings suggested that word length was the more potent of the two variables in effect on the frequency of stuttering.