Ta-based, less error-prone procedure, present findings that 7 non-stuttered disfluency criterion is highly specific and should result in greater accuracy in talker-group classification and help augment the accuracy of the existing 3 stuttered disfluency criterion when employed conjointly. Influence of expressive vocabulary on preschoolers’ non-stuttered disfluencies–In R848MedChemExpress S28463 partial support of the third hypothesis, expressive vocabulary size, as measured by the EVT, was shown to be associated with the BUdR biological activity frequency of non-stuttered disfluencies in both talker groups. For both talker groups, children who exhibited lower expressive vocabulary scores, produced more non-stuttered disfluencies. This finding corroborates an existing body of research suggesting that children’s language skill and nonstuttered or “normal” disfluencies are related (Boscolo et al., 2002; Wagovich, Hall, Clifford, 2009; Westby, 1979). In fact, literature on sentence formulation in adults and the literature on fluency and language interactions in children who stutter and children withNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptJ Commun Disord. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2015 May 01.Tumanova et al.Pagenormal fluency (Bernstein Ratner, 1997; Boscolo et al., 2002; Masterson Kamhi, 1991; Richels et al., 2010; Yaruss et al., 1999; Zackheim Conture, 2003) suggest that language formulation difficulties or task variations contribute to fluency breakdown. Perhaps, children with a smaller expressive vocabulary may experience ?during typical conversational discourse ?more word-finding difficulties, leading to a larger number of non-stuttered disfluencies. It should be kept in mind, however, that the relation between EVT standard score and frequency of non-stuttered disfluencies, although statistically significant, is very subtle ( = -0.008) and thus may have minimal clinical significance. Indeed, standardized tests may be less than sensitive to the dynamic, rapid and subtle conversational interaction between children’s speech disfluencies and concurrent syntactic, lexical and phonological/articulatory processes. Thus, a more comprehensive understanding of this interaction, we suggest, most likely must await further empirical study. Influence of age on preschoolers’ speech disfluencies–In partial support of the third hypothesis, we found that age was associated with the frequency of non-stuttered disfluencies, such that older preschool-age children produced more non-stuttered disfluencies. This association is consistent with Ambrose and Yairi’s (1999) finding of a non-significant trend for increase of non-stuttered disfluencies with age in their sample of preschool-age children who do and do not stutter. Of course, children’s preschool years (2? years of age) represents a time of rapid development of speech and language. Indeed, the present finding that older preschool-age children produced more normal disfluencies seems to suggest that the quantitative and qualitative changes in language that happen during this age may be associated with an increase in non-stuttered disfluencies. However, similarly to the EVT association with disfluencies, the association between age and frequency of nonstuttered disfluencies was very subtle ( = .008) and thus may have minimal clinical significance. Influence of gender on preschoolers’ non-stuttered and total disfluencies–In partial support of the third hypothesis, we found that gender was associated wit.Ta-based, less error-prone procedure, present findings that 7 non-stuttered disfluency criterion is highly specific and should result in greater accuracy in talker-group classification and help augment the accuracy of the existing 3 stuttered disfluency criterion when employed conjointly. Influence of expressive vocabulary on preschoolers’ non-stuttered disfluencies–In partial support of the third hypothesis, expressive vocabulary size, as measured by the EVT, was shown to be associated with the frequency of non-stuttered disfluencies in both talker groups. For both talker groups, children who exhibited lower expressive vocabulary scores, produced more non-stuttered disfluencies. This finding corroborates an existing body of research suggesting that children’s language skill and nonstuttered or “normal” disfluencies are related (Boscolo et al., 2002; Wagovich, Hall, Clifford, 2009; Westby, 1979). In fact, literature on sentence formulation in adults and the literature on fluency and language interactions in children who stutter and children withNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptJ Commun Disord. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2015 May 01.Tumanova et al.Pagenormal fluency (Bernstein Ratner, 1997; Boscolo et al., 2002; Masterson Kamhi, 1991; Richels et al., 2010; Yaruss et al., 1999; Zackheim Conture, 2003) suggest that language formulation difficulties or task variations contribute to fluency breakdown. Perhaps, children with a smaller expressive vocabulary may experience ?during typical conversational discourse ?more word-finding difficulties, leading to a larger number of non-stuttered disfluencies. It should be kept in mind, however, that the relation between EVT standard score and frequency of non-stuttered disfluencies, although statistically significant, is very subtle ( = -0.008) and thus may have minimal clinical significance. Indeed, standardized tests may be less than sensitive to the dynamic, rapid and subtle conversational interaction between children’s speech disfluencies and concurrent syntactic, lexical and phonological/articulatory processes. Thus, a more comprehensive understanding of this interaction, we suggest, most likely must await further empirical study. Influence of age on preschoolers’ speech disfluencies–In partial support of the third hypothesis, we found that age was associated with the frequency of non-stuttered disfluencies, such that older preschool-age children produced more non-stuttered disfluencies. This association is consistent with Ambrose and Yairi’s (1999) finding of a non-significant trend for increase of non-stuttered disfluencies with age in their sample of preschool-age children who do and do not stutter. Of course, children’s preschool years (2? years of age) represents a time of rapid development of speech and language. Indeed, the present finding that older preschool-age children produced more normal disfluencies seems to suggest that the quantitative and qualitative changes in language that happen during this age may be associated with an increase in non-stuttered disfluencies. However, similarly to the EVT association with disfluencies, the association between age and frequency of nonstuttered disfluencies was very subtle ( = .008) and thus may have minimal clinical significance. Influence of gender on preschoolers’ non-stuttered and total disfluencies–In partial support of the third hypothesis, we found that gender was associated wit.