Adapting Early Childhood Stuttering Therapy (Yaruss and Reardon-Reeves, 2017)

Summary

Introduction: Stuttering is a complex speech disorder, appearing already at preschool age. Despite the fact that spontaneous correction may occur, we consider it important to devote therapy to this disorder already at this age.
Objective: We decided to measure and compare stuttering symptoms before and after therapy, thus to determine whether the less-direct stuttering therapy according to Yaruss and Reardon-Reeves (2017) was effective and had a positive effect on stuttering symptoms in two children aged 3 and 4.8 years. We also wanted to determine whether the parents’ concerns decreased after therapy.
Methods: Firstly, an examination was conducted to rule out a developmental language disorder or a speech and sound disorder. Dysfluencies were evaluated in speech samples gathered by different speech tasks: non-word and sentence re­petition, sentence completion, automatic speech tasks and spontaneous speech recordings (home and MAIN). We also assessed the level of the parents’ concerns on a 5-point scale. Further, on a 5-point scale, parents evaluated their child’s fluency for each day in the home environment. 
Less-direct therapy (Yaruss and Reardon-Reeves, 2017) is based on a multidisciplinary model of stuttering and consists of two approaches to the therapy of stuttering in children – less direct and more direct. In our research, we used less-direct therapy in two children aged 3 and 4.8 years at the time the therapy started. The aim of less-direct therapy is to create an environment for the child that supports his/her fluency. Parents learn 5 communication strategies.
Results: In both children, there was a reduction of dysfluencies in all examined areas. In the case of the first child, dysfluencies decreased by 34.11% and, in the case of the second child, by 9.13%. In both children, the parents’ concerns and the assessment of dysfluencies in the home environment decreased.
Conclusion: We adapted the methodology of Yaruss and Reardon-Reeves (2017) to Slovak conditions and verified the effectiveness of less-direct therapy on two children. Based on our results, we can state that the therapy was effective for these two children. However, further research, more thorough analyses of the data and monitoring of the long-term effect of the therapy are needed.
 

Keywords:

Stuttering, stuttering therapy, preschool age, indirect therapy, effectiveness of therapy