Abstract
Summary
The purpose of this project was to determine the short term effects of systematic desensitization via imagery on the severity of stuttering in a group of adult stutterers. These effects were compared with those obtained through the use of a traditional symptomatic therapy approach with another group of adult stutterers. The two groups of stutterers were matched for stuttering severity. Within the short time span of this study, both groups attained significant improvement using numbers of blocks and block duration ratios as measures of severity. There were no significant differences of improvement between the two groups. There was also a tack of correspondence between the severity of stuttering and the level of speech anxiety in various situations.