Introduction: Cluttering is briefly defined by speech that is
perceived as fast and/or irregular. Examination of cluttering literature
reveals that the main features of the symptoms of the rapid and/or irregular
speech are quite clear, whereas accompanying symptoms are not. This might be the
result of the presence of possible subtypes in cluttering, the use of different
research procedures, working with small groups, as well as having these studies
in different languages Therefore, descriptive studies specific to language are
essential. In the literature, predominantly the fluency characteristics of English-speaking
individuals were examined. It was deemed important to examine the disfluency
characteristics of individuals who speak an agglutinative language such as
Turkish. Purpose: The aim of this
study was to investigate the disfluency characteristics of Turkish-speaking
adults who have cluttering. Accordingly, the first of the sub-objectives is to
determine the distribution of disfluency a) stuttering-like, b)
non-stuttering-like disfluency types in spontaneous speech and reading. The
telescoping behaviors were also examined in detail under the scope of
disfluency. Another aim of the study was to investigate the relationship
between total disfluencies in spontaneous speech and total disfluency in
reading. One other purpose was to examine the relationship between expert
assessment and participants' self-assessments based on Predictive Cluttering
Inventory-PCI scores. The final aim of the study was to examine the quality of
life, participation and satisfaction of the participants related to cluttering.
Method: This study used descriptive
survey and correlational survey models to determine the disfluency
characteristics of adults who clutter. Based on the criteria suggested in the
literature, two women (20%) and eight men (80%), 10 adults in total 23 to 39
years of age (X = 29.9, SD = 5.82), whose native language is Turkish and
diagnosed with cluttering by a Speech and Language Therapist were included in
this study. Spontaneous speech and reading samples were taken from the
participants. Predictive Cluttering Inventory-PCI, which evaluates cluttering
in four dimensions as pragmatic, motor-speech, language-cognition, and motor coordination-writing
problems, was used. Both experts and participants answered this inventory.
Also, the Cluttering Quality of Life and Satisfaction Questionnaire developed
by the researchers was used to measure their thoughts, attitudes, and
participation about fast-impaired speech. Disfluencies in speech and reading
samples were classified according to the literature, and descriptive statistics
were calculated. SPSS 21 package program was used to analyze the data. The
relationship between the two variables was analyzed by correlation analysis
between the total values of spontaneous speech fluency and reading fluency.
Spearman, Pearson, and Kendall's tau-b tests were used to analyze the
relationship between expert assessment and participant self-assessment. Results and Discussion: In spontaneous
speech samples, it was observed that the most frequent disfluencies were
abnormal pauses, interjections, and unfinished sentence. The reading samples included
abnormal pauses, word repetition, and revisions, in that order. Types of
disfluency that occured during reading did not include sound repetitions and
unfinished words. The nonstuttering-like disfluencies were about ten times that
of stuttering-like disfluencies. These results are, to a large extent, compatible with the
literature. The heterogeneous nature of cluttering may explain the higher
stuttering-like disfluencies in some participants. Although the percentages
vary from one person to another, telescoping behavior was seen in all
participants. The rate of exhibiting this behavior varies between 1% and 17% (X
= 5.8, SD = 5.42). This result can be explained by the agglutinating morphological
structure of Turkish. Although there was no statistical significance between
the self-assessment and expert inventory ratings, the participants considered
themselves to be more positive when they evaluated their cluttering characteristics
compared to the assessments of Speech and Language Therapists. This finding may
be related to lack of self-awareness, which is often associated with
cluttering. When the quality of life and satisfaction of the participants
related to cluttering are examined, it is seen that the responses are generally
positive. In other words, participants reported that they did not hide their
cluttering to a great extent. However, 60% of the respondents answered item 6
which is "When I first meet people, I make a special effort not to be
noticed that I speak fast-impaired" by "I agree a bit" or
"I fully agree."
Keywords
Turkish, cluttering, disfluency type, telescoping, life quality
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