Treating Stuttering in a Preschool Child With Syllable Timed Speech: A Case Report

Abstract

In this article we report the use of a simple, nonprogrammed, syllable timed speech procedure to treat stuttering in a 3-year-old boy with a 2-year history of stuttering. The treatment involved the boy and his parents visiting the clinic 7 times, and the parents modelling syllable timed speech 2 to 6 times per day for 5- to 10-minute intervals in and around the home. After 7 weeks, clinic measures and objective, blinded measures of speech beyond the clinic showed stuttering frequency below 1.0% syllables stuttered. Along with low severity ratings made by the parent each day, this meets the stuttering criteria of another, proven treatment for early stuttering intervention. However, in this study reduction in stuttering was achieved with a simpler and more cost efficient procedure. With the caveat that this is a nonexperimental case report, we discuss its potential implications.

Systematic studies of modified vocalization: the effect of speech rate on speech production measures during metronome‐paced speech in persons who stutter

“…If a speech production change is found to be important for fluency during metronome‐paced speech, it would not only inform us about the nature of stuttering, but also may provide valuable information for current metronome‐paced speech treatments with preschoolers (Trajkovski et al . , , ) and school‐age children (Andrews et al . ) who stutter.…”

Using syllable-timed speech to treat preschool children who stutter: A multiple baseline experiment

“…More recently, Trajkovski, Andrews O'Brian, Onslow, and Packman (2006) reported the use of a STS procedure to treat stuttering in a 3-year-old boy with a 2-year history of stuttering. To address the shortcomings of past research, STS was used in this study at near normal speech rate, with normal intonation, and without the use of programmed instruction.…”

Eternity and clinical translation of speech-language pathology research

“…Cheryl and Natasha published a preliminary report on the treatment this year (Trajkovski, Andrews, O'Brian, Onslow, & Packman, 2006), at the time of writing have completed further work on the treatment (Trajkovski et al, 2007), and all is looking good and we have a Phase II trial under way. We have the Camperdown Program (O'Brian, Onslow, Cream, & Packman, 2003), the Lidcombe Program (Jones et al, 2005), and if this new treatment passes muster-as I think it will-we might call it the Westmead Program, in honour of where Cheryl's private practice is where the idea first occurred to her.…”