Intensive Stuttering Therapy in a Public School Setting

Abstract

Two intensive stuttering treatment programs, which were implemented in a public school setting, are described. In the initial program, six students were treated using graded airflow, tension/relaxation, and EMG biofeedback procedures to reduce stuttering frequency. A discriminative stimulus (S D ) control procedure was to be used to facilitate the maintenance of fluency following treatment, but due to time constraints only one student completed the S D program. All six students met the criterion of ⩽1% stuttered words by the end of the treatment, but only the one student who completed the maintenance procedure continued to meet the fluency criterion of ⩽1% stuttered words at follow up, 7 months later. In the second treatment program, nine students were treated using procedures only slightly modified from the first program. The modified procedures allowed all students to complete all aspects of the treatment program, including the discriminative stimulus (S D ) control procedure. All nine students in the second program met the criterion of ⩽1% stuttered words by the end of treatment and six of the nine continued to meet the criterion of ⩽1% stuttered words in follow up assessment 6 to 7 months post treatment. The procedures and results are discussed in terms of the relevance of intensive behavioral programming of stuttering therapy in the public schools.