At our Lidcombe Link days in the UK we sometimes practice %SS from passages of text where we know exactly how many syllables there are. We find though that there are often discrepancies in our results! People are pretty good at hearing the stutters but we get differing numbers of syllables. Is this a typical finding and is there any research on this? And in particular are there any ‘common’ reasons for the discrepancies that we can learn from the research?

At our Lidcombe Link days in the UK we sometimes practice %SS from passages of text where we know exactly how many syllables there are. We find though that there are often discrepancies in our results! People are pretty good at hearing the stutters but we get differing numbers of syllables. Is this a typical finding and is there any research on this? And in particular are there any ‘common’ reasons for the discrepancies that we can learn from the research?

Your finding is typical and this is one reason why the %SS measure is no longer required in the Lidcombe Porgram. See the following reference for further information about this:

Teesson, K., Packman, A., & Onslow, M. (2003). The Lidcombe Behavioural Data Language of Stuttering. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 46, 1009-1015.

LPTC - AN INTRODUCTION