Early Stuttering Research Articles

How Parental Reactions Differ Towards Early Stuttering: A Turkish Validation Study of the Responses to Speech Disfluency Scale

How Parental Reactions Differ Towards Early Stuttering: A Turkish Validation Study of the Responses to Speech Disfluency Scale

Challenges and Strategies for Speech-Language Pathologists Using the Lidcombe Program for Early Stuttering.

The Lidcombe program is a treatment for preschool-age children who stutter. Studies indicate that its implementation is not always straightforward. In this study, challenges that parents and speech-language pathologists (SLPs) encounter when implementing the Lidcombe program were identified, and strategies to address them were sought. In Part 1, Lidcombe program treatment challenges were determined from 4 sources. In Part 2, 7 SLPs with 15 to 23 years of Lidcombe program experience were interviewed to develop strategies to respond to the identified treatment challenges. A template of the themes and a report with possible strategies are the outcomes of this study. A total of 124 themes were identified, mostly related to the implementation of Lidcombe program procedures. Strategies to deal with these challenges were formulated. This study provides treatment challenges that parents or SLPs may encounter during the Lidcombe program. It also provides strategies that SLPs can suggest to address them. An added contribution of the findings is that SLPs in the clinic can now anticipate the sort of treatment challenges that parents may face. A summary of the findings will be made available on the Australian Stuttering Research Centre website and through the Lidcombe Program Trainers Consortium.

Lidcombe Program Webcam Treatment for Early Stuttering: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

Webcam treatment is potentially useful for health care in cases of early stuttering in which clients are isolated from specialized treatment services for geographic and other reasons. The purpose of the present trial was to compare outcomes of clinic and webcam deliveries of the Lidcombe Program treatment (Packman et al., 2015) for early stuttering. The design was a parallel, open plan, noninferiority randomized controlled trial of the standard Lidcombe Program treatment and the experimental webcam Lidcombe Program treatment. Participants were 49 children aged 3 years 0 months to 5 years 11 months at the start of treatment. Primary outcomes were the percentage of syllables stuttered at 9 months postrandomization and the number of consultations to complete Stage 1 of the Lidcombe Program. There was insufficient evidence of a posttreatment difference of the percentage of syllables stuttered between the standard and webcam Lidcombe Program treatments. There was insufficient evidence of a difference between the groups for typical stuttering severity measured by parents or the reported clinical relationship with the treating speech-language pathologist. This trial confirmed the viability of the webcam Lidcombe Program intervention. It appears to be as efficacious and economically viable as the standard, clinic Lidcombe Program treatment.

Follow–up data of Implementation the Lidcombe Program in Early Stuttering Treatment

The purpose of this article is to present the results of the implementation of the Lidcombe Program in Bulgaria and follow up data for two years after the completion of the therapy. The main aims of the therapy are: (1) to apply Lidcombe Program; (2) to complete Stage 1; and (3) to follow children up to two years after the therapy (Stage 2). The aim of the study is to explore the long term effectiveness of the Lidcombe Program when delivered in a clinic at South West University in Bulgaria. Results show a significant difference between initial part of the treatment and two years after the therapy.

Webcam Delivery of the Lidcombe Program for Early Stuttering: A Phase I Clinical Trial

The Lidcombe Program is an operant treatment for early stuttering shown with meta-analysis to have a favorable odds ratio. However, many clients are unable to access the treatment because of distance and lifestyle factors. In this Phase I trial, we explored the potential efficacy, practicality, and viability of an Internet webcam Lidcombe Program service delivery model. Participants were 3 preschool children who stuttered and their parents, all of whom received assessment and treatment using webcam in their homes with no clinic attendance. At 6 months post-Stage 1 completion, all children were stuttering below 1.0% syllables stuttered. The webcam intervention was acceptable to the parents and appeared to be practical and viable, with only occasional audiovisual problems. At present, there is no reason to doubt that a webcam-delivered Lidcombe Program will be shown with clinical trials to have comparable efficacy with the clinic version. Webcam-delivered Lidcombe Program intervention is potentially efficacious, is practical and viable, and requires further exploration with comparative clinical trials and a qualitative study of parent and caregiver experiences.

North-American Lidcombe Program file audit: Replication and meta-analysis

Thousands of North American clinicians have trained for the Lidcombe Program of Early Stuttering Intervention, yet there are no benchmark data for that continent. This retrospective file audit includes logistical regression of variables from files of 134 children younger than 6 years who completed Stage 1 of the Lidcombe Program. Benchmarking data for clinic visits to Stage 2 is available for these files. Meta-analysis supplements worldwide Lidcombe Program benchmark data. The median number of clinic visits to Stage 2 was 11. High pre-treatment stuttering severity predicted more clinic visits than low severity. A trend toward statistical significance was found for the frequency of clinic visits. Frequent attendance of mean less than 11 days was associated with longer treatment times than infrequent attendance of mean 11 days or more. Results for North America were consistent with benchmark data from the UK and Australia. The mean attendance trend is clinically important and requires further investigation because of its potential clinical significance.

Extended follow‐up of a randomized controlled trial of the Lidcombe Program of Early Stuttering Intervention

In the Lidcombe Program of Early Stuttering Intervention, parents present verbal contingencies for stutter-free and stuttered speech in everyday situations. A previous randomized controlled trial of the programme with preschool-age children from 2005, conducted in two public speech clinics in New Zealand, showed that the odds of attaining clinically minimal levels of stuttering 9 months after randomization were more than seven times greater for the treatment group than for the control group. To follow up the children in the trial to determine extended long-term outcomes of the programme. An experienced speech-language therapist who was not involved in the original trial talked with the children on the telephone, audio recording the conversations using a telephone recording jack. Parental reports were gathered in addition to the children's speech samples in order to obtain a balance of objective data and reports from a wide range of situations. At the time of this follow-up, the children were aged 7-12 years, with a mean of 5 years post-randomization in the 2005 trial. Twenty of the 29 children in the treatment arm and eight of the 25 children in the control (no treatment) arm were able to be contacted. Of the children in the treatment group, one (5%) failed to complete treatment and 19 had completed treatment successfully and had zero or near-zero frequency of stuttering. Three of the children (16%) who had completed treatment successfully had relapsed after 2 or more years of speech that was below 1% syllables stuttered. Meaningful comparison with the control group was not possible because an insufficient number of control children were located and some of them received treatment after completing the trial. The majority of preschool children are able to complete the Lidcombe Program successfully and remain below 1% syllables stuttered for a number of years. However, a minority of children do relapse and will require their parents to reinstate the treatment procedures.

Long-Term Outcome of the Lidcombe Program for Early Stuttering Intervention

To report long-term outcomes of the first 15 preschool children treated with the Lidcombe Program by speech-language pathologists (SLPs) who were inexperienced with the program and independent of the program developers. Research questions were: Would the treatment have a similar outcome with inexperienced SLPs compared to outcomes when implemented by the developers? Is treatment duration associated with pretreatment measures? Is long-term treatment outcome affected by variables associated with natural recovery? Fifteen preschool children who completed the Lidcombe Program were assessed prior to treatment and at least 12 months following treatment. Pretreatment data were obtained from archived files; follow-up data were obtained from interviews and recordings completed after the study had been planned. Measures of stuttering indicated significant changes from pretreatment to follow-up in percentage of syllables stuttered and scores on the Stuttering Severity Instrument, Third Edition. Pretreatment severity was significantly correlated with treatment time. Handedness was the only client characteristic that appeared to be related to long-term treatment outcome. The treatment produced significant long-term changes in children's speech, even when administered by SLPs newly trained in the Lidcombe Program. Treatment results appear to be influenced by pretreatment stuttering severity.

A Phase II Trial of Telehealth Delivery of the Lidcombe Program of Early Stuttering Intervention

The aims of this study were to evaluate the efficacy of telehealth delivery of the Lidcombe Program of Early Stuttering Intervention, compared with a control group, and to determine the number of children who could be regarded as "responders." A speech-language pathologist provided telehealth delivery of the Lidcombe Program during telephone consultations with parents in their homes, remote from the clinic. The study design was an open plan, parallel group, randomized controlled trial with blinded outcome assessment. Children in the no-treatment control group who were still stuttering after 9 months then received the same treatment. The primary outcome measure was frequency of stuttering, gathered from audiotape recordings of participants' conversational speech in everyday, nontreatment situations, before and after treatment. Analysis of covariance showed a 73% decrease in frequency of stuttering at 9 months after randomization in the treatment group, as compared with the control group (95% confidence interval = 25%-90%, p = .02). Measures of treatment time showed that telehealth delivery of the Lidcombe Program requires around 3 times more resources than standard presentation. Telehealth delivery of the Lidcombe Program is an efficacious treatment for preschool children who cannot receive the standard, clinic-based Lidcombe Program. Avenues for improving efficiency are considered.

Clinical Identification of Early Stuttering: Methods, Issues, and Future Directions

AbstractThe need for early stuttering intervention currently is thought to be incontrovertible. Identification of cases of early stuttering, therefore, is basic to that intervention. However, the topic has received little debate, even though it is inevitably controversial, and the topic of the timing of early intervention has been debated extensively. There is currently no consensus about how to identify early stuttering at the time of initial assessment and in the event of post-treatment relapse. If such a consensus could be reached, this would lead to more effective communication between clinicians and researchers working in the field. Furthermore, as the field develops, screening methods for early stuttering will be necessary. The purpose of this paper is to open up discussion about methods to identify early stuttering. We hope that such debate will ultimately lead to empirical investigations of the topic. First we propose criteria to define what might be considered a desirable method: reliability, sen...

The Role of Parents in the Therapy Process: Reflections on 26 Years of Intervention

No AccessPerspectives on Fluency and Fluency DisordersArticle1 Feb 2006The Role of Parents in the Therapy Process: Reflections on 26 Years of Intervention Michael J. Retzinger Michael J. Retzinger Private PracticeManitowa\oc, WI Google Scholar More articles by this author https://doi.org/10.1044/ffd16.1.13 SectionsAboutFull TextPDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationTrack Citations ShareFacebookTwitterLinked In References ASHA. (2001). Scope of practice in speech-language pathology. Rockville, MD, Author. Google Scholar ASHA. (2003). Code of ethics (revised). ASHA Supplement 23, pp13–15. Google Scholar Brisk, D. J.,Healey, E. C., & Husk, K. A. (1997). Clinicians’ training and confidence associated with treating school-age children who stutter: A national survey. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 28, 164–176. Google Scholar Ham, R. E. (1999). Clinical management of stuttering in older children and adults. Gaithersburg, MD: Aspen Publishers. Google Scholar Onslow, M.,Packman, A., & Harrison, E. (2003). The Lidcombe Program of Early Stuttering Intervention: A Clinician’s Guide. Austin, TX: PRO-ED. Google Scholar Additional Resources FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Volume 16Issue 1February 2006Pages: 13-15 Get Permissions Add to your Mendeley library History Published in issue: Feb 1, 2006 Metrics Downloaded 15 times Topicsasha-topicsleader-topicsasha-article-typesasha-sigsCopyright & Permissions© 2006 American Speech-Language-Hearing AssociationPDF DownloadLoading ...

The Young Stuttering Child Who Attends School: What Challenges!

No AccessPerspectives on Fluency and Fluency DisordersArticle1 Feb 2006The Young Stuttering Child Who Attends School: What Challenges! Susan M. Cochrane Susan M. Cochrane Freedom To Speak Honeoye, New York Google Scholar More articles by this author https://doi.org/10.1044/ffd16.1.3 SectionsAboutFull TextPDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationTrack Citations ShareFacebookTwitterLinked In References Adams, M. (1993). The home environment of children who stutter..Seminars in Speech and Language, 14, 185–192. CrossrefGoogle Scholar Anderson, P. P., & Fenichel, E. S. (1989).Serving culturally diverse families of infants and toddlers with disabilities.Washington, DC: National Center for Clinical Infant Programs. Google Scholar Bennett, E. M. (2006). Working with people who stutter: A lifespan approach.Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education. Google Scholar Correa, V. I. (1989). Involving culturally diverse families in the educational process. Meeting the needs of culturally diverse and linguistically different students: A handbook for educators..Boston: Little, Brown. Google Scholar Gregory, H. H., & Hill, D. (1984). Stuttering therapy for children.. In W. Perkins (Ed.), Stuttering disorders.: New York: Thieme-Stratton. Google Scholar Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1975). Learning together and alone: Cooperation, competition, and individualization.Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Google Scholar OnslowM.,Packman, A., & Harrison, E. (2003). The LidcombeProgram of Early Stuttering Intervention: A Clinician’s Guide. Austin, TX: PRO-ED. Google Scholar Peters, T. J., & Guitar, B. (1991). Stuttering: An integrated approach to its nature and treatment.Baltimore, MD: Williams & Wilkins. Google Scholar Rustin, L. (1987). The treatment of childhood dysfluency through active parental involvement.. In L. Rustin, H. Purser, & H. Rowley (Eds.), Progress in the treatment of fluency disorders(pp. 166–180). London: Taylor & Francis. Google Scholar Starkweather, C. W.,Gottwald, S. R., & Halfond, M. (1990). Stuttering prevention:A clinical method.Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Google Scholar Turnbull, A., & Turnbull, H. (1990). Families, professionals and exceptionality..Columbus, OH:Merrill. Google Scholar VanRiper, C. (1973). The treatment of stuttering..Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Google Scholar Zebrowski, P. (1997). Assisting young children who stutter and their families: Defining the role of the speech-language pathologist.American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 6, 19–28. LinkGoogle Scholar Additional Resources FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Volume 16Issue 1February 2006Pages: 3-5 Get Permissions Add to your Mendeley library History Published in issue: Feb 1, 2006 Metrics Downloaded 23 times Topicsasha-topicsleader-topicsasha-article-typesasha-sigsCopyright & Permissions© 2006 American Speech-Language-Hearing AssociationLoading ...

Progression of Language Complexity During Treatment With the Lidcombe Program for Early Stuttering Intervention

The Lidcombe Program is an operant treatment for early stuttering. Outcomes indicate that the program is effective; however, the underlying mechanisms leading to a successful reduction of stuttering remain unknown. The purpose of this study was to determine whether fluency achieved with the Lidcombe Program was accompanied by concomitant reduction of utterance length and decreases in linguistic complexity. Standardized language tests were administered pretreatment to 4 male preschool children. Spontaneous language samples were taken 2 weeks prior to treatment, at Weeks 1, 4, 8, and 12 during treatment, and 6 months after the onset of treatment. Samples were analyzed for mean length of utterance (MLU), percentage of simple and complex sentences, number of different words (NDW), and percentage of syllables stuttered. Analysis revealed that all participants presented with language skills in the average and above average range. The children achieved an increase in stutter-free speech accompanied by increases in MLU, percentage of complex sentences, and NDW. For these preschool children who stutter, improved stutter-free speech during treatment with the program appeared to be achieved without a decrease in linguistic complexity. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.

An operant intervention for early stuttering. The development of the Lidcombe program.

Stuttering is a common speech disorder that causes significant distress and may cause social maladjustment and hinder occupational potential. Treatments for chronic stuttering in adults can control stuttering by teaching the speaker to use a new speech pattern. However, these treatments are resource intensive and relapse prone, and they produce speech that sounds unnatural to the listener and feels unnatural to the speaker. This article describes the development and evaluation of an operant treatment for early stuttering. Parents are trained to present verbal contingencies for stuttered and stutter-free speech during everyday speaking situations with their children. The authors overview outcome data from several studies that suggest that this program produces relapse-free control of stuttered speech in preschool children in the medium and long term in a cost-effective manner.

Spontaneous Recovery and Clinical Trials Research in Early Childhood Stuttering

Spontaneous Recovery and Clinical Trials Research in Early Childhood Stuttering

Treating Early Stuttering

Treating Early Stuttering

The Lidcombe Programme and Natural Recovery: Potential Choices of Initial Management Strategies for Early Stuttering

The Lidcombe Programme and Natural Recovery: Potential Choices of Initial Management Strategies for Early Stuttering

Distance Intervention for Early Stuttering with the Lidcombe Programme

The Lidcombe Programme is a parent-conducted operant intervention for early stuttering. This article presents a case study of the Lidcombe Programme adapted for distance intervention with a family who were isolated from treatment services. The subject, Matthew, was 5 years 10 months old and had been stuttering severely for nearly 4 years at the start of treatment. The entire treatment occurred by telephone contact and was supplemented by audiotape and videotape recordings of the subject's speech, which were mailed to the clinician by his parents. Matthew's mother was taught to implement all aspects of the Lidcombe Programme: control of stuttering with on-line praise and correction, measurement of stuttering severity, and administration of a maintenance programme. Matthew attained near-zero stuttering levels after 25 telephone consultations over a period of 9 months. Data suggest that he maintained those levels for 23 months posttreatment. Plans for further research into distance intervention with the Lidcombe Programme are discussed, with particular reference to the issue of cost effectiveness.

The Early Stuttering Intervention Debate: Generating Light and Heat

The Early Stuttering Intervention Debate: Generating Light and Heat

Treatment of Early Childhood Stuttering

Treatment of Early Childhood Stuttering