Question
What factors can cause variability in the outcomes of stuttering therapy?
Answer
Dr. Conture, from Vanderbilt University, and I wrote a chapter on stuttering therapy and those factors that can affect intervention outcomes. We were interested in seeing if we could predict how well a client would do in therapy. When we looked at linguistic factors and temperament factors, the data showed that the biggest predictor of outcomes were the temperament factors.
Children who have an inhibited temperament or a perfectionist temperament often took longer to engage in the therapy process. Sometimes it took us up to six weeks to get these children more than physically in the room. So, sometimes your therapy is not effective, not because your therapy is not good, but because the child is just not ready to partake at that point. Likewise, if you have a child who is very resistant to change, it is going to take them awhile to buy into the fact that the change in their routine of just having to come to therapy is okay. They also have to implicitly accept that they're going to have to keep coming to therapy and that they're going to have to engage in whatever activities are going on in the therapy process in order to reduce the stuttering behavior. Honestly, this process is the same for the parents as well. Consistent change in the child corresponds with the family engaging in the therapy process, especially for indirect treatment.
This Ask the Expert was taken from the course entitled: Direct or Indirect Treatment: When to Use What with Preschool Children Who Stutter presented by Corrin Richels, Ph.D., CCC-SLP.
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Corrin G. Richels earned her Ph.D. in Speech and Hearing Science from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN in May, 2004. She is an assistant professor at Old Dominion University in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders in Norfolk, VA. Her interests include the assessment, treatment, and systematic study of language disorders including childhood stuttering.
