Slow speech rate effects on stuttering preschoolers with disordered phonology

Abstract

To study the effects of clinicians’ slow rate on the speech of children who stutter with and without a concomitant phonological disorder, an A–B–A–B single case design was used with six clinician–child dyads, where B = Clinician’s slow speech rate model. Two boys and one girl, aged 49–54 months, stuttering with disordered phonology (S + DP), were compared to three boys aged 42–50 months, stuttering with normal phonology (S + NP). Articulation rates were measured in phones per second (pps) in clinician–child adjacent utterance pairs. The S + NP dyads showed improved fluency in the B condition through a larger effect size, higher mean baseline stutter reductions and lower percentages of non-overlapping data than did the S + DP dyads. The S + DP girl showed relatively improved fluency in the B condition. S + DP children showed no articulation rate alignment (Range: 16% decrease to a 1.2% increase), whereas S + NP children averaged a 20% pps rate reduction (Range: 19.6–25.4% decrease), aligning with their clinicians who averaged a 38% pps rate reduction from baseline. The S + DP group spoke significantly (z = −4.63; p < 0.00) slower at baseline (Mdn = 6.9 pps; SE = 0.07 pps) than S + NP children in previously published samples (Mdn = 9.8 pps; SE = 0.22 pps). Results suggest that a slow rate model alone is not effective for facilitating fluency in S + DP boys with time since onset of about 2 years.

• Articulation rate
• children who stutter
• dyadic gap
• treatment efficacy
• single-subject design

Acknowledgements

The author would like to acknowledge the children and parents for participating in this study, graduate student clinicians and research assistants and the reviewers for their comments on previous versions of this manuscript.

Declaration of interest

The author reports no conflicts of interest.