Purpose This study measured between-group differences in perceived speech skills and personality characteristics of a 12-year-old boy who stutters as a function of a factual stuttering disclosure statement, delivered by the boy who stutters, his “mother,” or his “teacher.” Method Two hundred seventeen college-aged adults were randomly assigned to one of four groups, including a control group (no stuttering disclosure) and three experimental groups (child disclosure, mother disclosure, and teacher disclosure). Participants in the control condition viewed a brief video of a 12-year-old boy who stutters. For the experimental conditions, participants viewed a brief factual stuttering disclosure video (delivered by the child, mother, or teacher), followed by the same minute-long video of a boy who stutters used in the control condition. Following the videos, participants completed surveys relative to their perception of the boy's speech skills and personality characteristics. Results Results support previous research citing benefits of stuttering disclosure. Significant between-group differences in both perceived speech skills and personality characteristics were observed when stuttering was disclosed by not only the child who stutters but also his teacher. When stuttering was disclosed by the mother, limited positive attitudinal differences were observed in speech skills; as a matter of fact, a number of personality characteristics were perceived more negatively as a function of stuttering disclosure by the mother. Conclusions While results were generally most positive when the boy disclosed his own stuttering, data from this study support the efficacy of verbal stuttering disclosure provided by a teacher as a means of improving perceptions associated with stuttering. Accordingly, data support the notion that children who stutter will experience an improved quality of life when taught effective self-disclosure strategies by both parents and professionals, and that professionals (but not necessarily parents) can effectively disclose their clients' stuttering during this mentorship and self-advocacy process.

Introduction Speech disorders associated with Parkinson's disease (PD) and the pharmaceutical treatments of PD are well documented. A relatively recent treatment alternative for PD is deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN), which is used to manage the symptoms of PD as the disease progresses. This case study documented the speech characteristics of a unique client with PD STN-DBS and reported initial findings on a variety of fluency- and intelligibility-enhancing strategies. Method A speech-language pathologist referred a 63-year-old man, previously diagnosed by a speech-language pathologist with neurogenic stuttering as a result of an STN-DBS battery change, for a speech evaluation, reporting lack of success with traditional stuttering treatment strategies. The client's speech was assessed, and a variety of fluency- and intelligibility-enhancing techniques were tested during trial therapy. Results The client's speech exhibited the hallmark characteristics of hypokinetic dysarthria, including speech disfluencies. A variety of pacing and prosthetic strategies were tested, revealing that auditory and tactile prosthetic speech feedback provided optimal improvements in fluency and intelligibility. Discussion These results suggest that the prosthetic speech feedback provided optimal intelligibility and fluency enhancement and could potentially improve articulation and speech volume, which are also common in cases of hypokinetic dysarthria.