Musical pitch and timbre perception in stuttering children

Objectives: This study aims to evaluate musical pitch and timbre perception in children who stutter and compare the results with typically developing children.

Methods: A total of 50 participants were included in the study, consisting of 25 children with stuttering (mean age = 10.06 years; range 6-17 years) and 25 typically developing children (mean age = 10.38 years; range 7-16 years). Participants were administered Pitch Direction Discrimination (PDD) and Timbre Recognition (TR) tests in the original form of The Clinical Assessment of Music Perception. Both subtests were administered in a quiet room, and the children used headphones to receive auditory stimuli.

Results: The mean PDD score of the stuttering group was 3.60 semitones (SD = 2.71), while the mean score of the typically developing children was 2.26 semitones (SD = 1.43). In the TR test, the mean accuracy of the stuttering group was 53.17 % (SD = 21.69), while the mean accuracy of the non-stuttering group was 65.33 % (SD = 19.64). The difference between the two groups was statistically significant in the PDD (t(48) = 2.17, p = 0.03) and TR (t(48) = -2.08, p = 0.04) tests.

Conclusions: The study found that children who stuttered had poorer pitch and timbre musical perception skills than age-matched peers who were typically developing children. The lower success rates of the stuttering group on both tests may indicate general deficits in auditory processing, which could be related to attention and short-term memory processing.