Fluency predictor variables in early stuttering intervention for children

Abstract

Objectives: Parent-child interaction therapy (PCIT) is a widely used indirect approach to promote the fluency of young children who stutter by modifying their parents' interaction style. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of PCIT by identifying factors predicting the frequency of disfluency in the stuttering of persistent and recovered groups. Methods: PCIT was given to the parents of 18 children for 3 months. After PCIT, direct therapy was given to all children. Speech samples were collected two times (at 3 and 6 months after the initial evaluation) and were analyzed to identify contributing factors to predict stuttering persistence and recovery. Results: The results were as follows. The predictive model at 3 months predicted 82% of recovery by utterance length, communication behaviors, response time, and articulation rate of parents. On the other hand, the predictive model at 6 months (1 month after direct therapy) predicted 37% of recovery by parent's questioning and utterance length of the children. Conclusion: These findings suggest the importance of using both PCIT and direct therapy for children to improve and maintain treatment outcomes. This study also suggests that a therapy approach for young children who stutter needs to be determined by considering whether their stuttering problems are persistent or have recovered. © 2016 Korean Academy of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology.