Treatment of Early Childhood Stuttering: Clinical Presentation and Predictors of Outcome

Abstract

Stuttering typically occurs during the pre-school years. Despite this, there is limited understanding about the profile of children who experience early stuttering. Large prospective studies have identified associated risk factors for onset; however, no studies have been designed specifically to comprehensively explore the profile of early stuttering. Moreover, at present there are no known predictors of treatment outcome. There is evidence to suggest that higher stuttering severity at pre-treatment and longer onsetto- treatment interval predict unfavourable treatment outcome. However, those findings have since been contradicted, and only a small percentage of variance has been explained by regression models. The present thesis aimed to contribute to the knowledge base by conducting two studies using a large clinical cohort. Study 1 aimed to develop a profile of early childhood stuttering by conducting descriptive analyses of predictor variables across multiple domains. Study 2 dealt with regression models using those variables as predictors of short-and medium-term treatment outcome. The present thesis did not reveal anything notable about the demography, speech and language, and psychological function of clinically presenting pre-school children with early stuttering. However, preliminary findings on psychological measures revealed the need to comprehensively explore the psychological function of parents of preschoolers who begin to stutter. Regression models revealed that pre-treatment language skills and temperament characteristics predicted short- and medium-term treatment outcome, respectively. However, the models only explained a small percentage of the variance. This thesis concludes that there is nothing notable about the profile of children who present to clinic for stuttering treatment. Additionally, while there are predictors of treatment outcome that are of theoretical interest, further research is needed to understand their clinical relevance.