Clinical Identification of Early Stuttering: Methods, Issues, and Future Directions

Abstract

The need for early stuttering intervention currently is thought to be incontrovertible. Identification of cases of early stuttering, therefore, is basic to that intervention. However, the topic has received little debate, even though it is inevitably controversial, and the topic of the timing of early intervention has been debated extensively. There is currently no consensus about how to identify early stuttering at the time of initial assessment and in the event of post-treatment relapse. If such a consensus could be reached, this would lead to more effective communication between clinicians and researchers working in the field. Furthermore, as the field develops, screening methods for early stuttering will be necessary. The purpose of this paper is to open up discussion about methods to identify early stuttering. We hope that such debate will ultimately lead to empirical investigations of the topic. First we propose criteria to define what might be considered a desirable method: reliability, sensitivity, specificity, and practicality. We then discuss methods that have been used to identify early stuttering with reference to those criteria: the behavioral method, the perceptual method, and an amalgam of the two. We conclude by proposing issues for debate that may lead to empirical activity to establish the most optimal method or methods for early stuttering identification.