Speech Disfluencies in Individuals with Tourette Syndrome Assignment - 1

Speech Disfluencies in Individuals with Tourette Syndrome - Assignment Example The authors concluded that, despite there being no difference in self-reporting, the children with Tourette's syndrome did have a higher level of developmental stuttering, and that this is in line with previous studies. The introduction section of the article provides a basic overview of Tourette's syndrome, which the authors abbreviate as TS. This section of the paper does a good job of setting the current study within the wider conversation around Tourette's syndrome, arguing that "TS and developmental stuttering seem to share a number of other characteristics," suggesting that they share "etiological factors" in their origin (97). The authors also point out that studies on this topic are not widespread, with most studies focusing on other aspects of Tourette's syndrome, and that those which do focus on speech disfluencies often have flaws such as "variations in the definition of studying" or a lack of evaluation by speech-language pathologists (98). It is this lack of direct study on speech disfluency that the authors hope to address. For their study, the authors recruited children with Tourette's syndrome from a clinic at a Toronto hospital which specializes in treating it (98). Specifically, the study focused on 69 children with Tourette's syndrome, ranging in age from 4 to 18 years, and with varying degrees of Tourette's syndrome and other disorders such as Obsessive-compulsive disorder and Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (98). Beyond these children, the authors recruited a control group of 27 children ranging in age from 6 to 17 years from the general clinic at the same hospital (98). In order to achieve sensible results, the authors also split the children into age groups. The study itself had two parts. The first of these was filling out a questionnaire for the child to answer questions on "self-reported presence, nature, and familial incidence of speech and language difficulties" such as stuttering, voice problems, and so on (98).