A Preliminary Comparative Study on the Efficacy of Parent Education and Direct Therapy on Mandarin-Speaking Children with Stuttering

Abstract

The parents of four third-grade stuttering children (A, B, C and D) participated in a 20-hour group for parent education. Afterwards parent groups, C, D, E and F participated in a 15-hour direct therapy group for stuttering. E and F were in the 2nd and 1st grade, respectively. All of the children were male; their disfluencies, measured by SLDs/100 syllables were assessed at the beginning, end and 1-month follow-up of the parent group, and then of the direct therapy, individually. This study made comparisons regarding the efficacy of both parent education and direct therapy on the Mandarin-speaking children with stuttering. For the parent group, in terms of disfluency, 3 (75%) stuttering children showed obvious improvements at the end; 1 (25%) did not. At the follow-up, 2 (50%) maintained their gains and 2 (50%) regressed. For the direct therapy, 2 (50%) stuttering children decreased their disfluencies at the end obviously and 1 (25%) slightly; 1 (25%) did not. At the follow-up, 3 (75%) maintained their gains; 1 (25%) regressed. For the individual children, although A did not receive direct therapy, parental influence on disfluency reduction still occurred after 9 months. However, the same effect was not for B. E and F had obvious improvements in their speech performances until the follow-up after having direct therapy. Both C and D had 2 interventions but with unstable improvements. In summary, comparing to the disfluencies at the first assessment, 75% suttering children apparently decreased their disfluencies at the end of the parent group; 50% maintained their gains until the one-month follow-up; 75% decreased their disfluencies until the follow-up of the direct therapy. Various effects occurred in different interventions for the school-age stuttering children who speak Mandarin because environmental factors may have impacts on children's disfluencies, such as parent-child relationship and academic stress.