Australian pre-service primary teachers' knowledge, attitudes, and skills regarding stuttering.

Purpose: Exploring Australian pre-service primary teachers' knowledge, attitudes, and classroom strategies regarding stuttering provides speech-language pathologists (SLPs) with information that can facilitate enhanced outcomes for school-aged children who stutter.Method: In this exploratory descriptive cross-sectional study, 51 final-year Bachelor of Education (Primary) students enrolled at an Australian university completed an online survey about stuttering.Result: Responses demonstrated positive and negative beliefs. Seventy-four per cent of pre-service teachers believed that stuttering has a psychological aetiology and that students who stutter are more likely to be shy or anxious. Participants agreed that their reactions and support offered would largely be based on their assumptions rather than knowledge.Conclusion: Pre-service primary teachers share similar misconceptions and unhelpful attitudes towards stuttering with previously evaluated populations. Implications for SLPs are discussed.

Verbal Contingencies in the Lidcombe Program: A Noninferiority Trial.

Purpose The Lidcombe Program is an efficacious and effective intervention for early stuttering. The treatment is based on parent verbal response contingent stimulation procedures, which are assumed to be responsible for treatment effect. The present trial tested this assumption. Method The design was a parallel, open plan, noninferiority randomized controlled trial. In the experimental arm, the five Lidcombe Program verbal contingencies were removed from parent instruction. The primary outcome was beyond-clinic percentage syllables stuttered at 18-month follow-up. Seventy-four children and their parents were randomized to one of the two treatment arms. Results Findings of noninferiority were inconclusive for the primary outcome of stuttering severity, based on a margin of 1.0 percentage syllables stuttered. Conclusions The inconclusive finding of noninferiority means it is possible that verbal contingencies make some contribution to the Lidcombe Program treatment effect. However, considering all primary and secondary outcomes, an overriding impression from the trial is a similarity of outcomes between the control and experimental arms. The clinical applications of the trial are discussed, along with further research that is needed.

Management options for pediatric patients who stutter: current challenges and future directions.

Stuttering is a speech disorder, with onset often occurring in the preschool years. The prevalence of stuttering in young children is much higher than that in the general population, suggesting a high rate of recovery. However, we are unable to predict which children will recover without treatment, and it is widely acknowledged that stuttering therapy during childhood provides the best safeguard against chronic stuttering. This review reports on current evidence-based stuttering treatment options for preschoolers through to adolescents. We discuss the clinical challenges associated with treating pediatric clients who stutter at different stages of development and explore potential areas of treatment research that might serve to advance current clinical practice in the future.

An investigation of the role of parental request for self-correction of stuttering in the Lidcombe Program.

PURPOSE: The Lidcombe Program is a behavioural treatment for stuttering in children younger than 6 years that is supported by evidence of efficacy and effectiveness. The treatment incorporates parent verbal contingencies for stutter-free speech and for stuttering. However, the contribution of those contingencies to reductions in stuttering in the program is unclear. METHOD: Thirty-four parent-child dyads were randomized to two treatment groups. The control group received standard Lidcombe Program and the experimental group received Lidcombe Program without instruction to parents to use the verbal contingency request for self-correction. Treatment responsiveness was measured as time to 50% stuttering severity reduction. RESULT: No differences were found between groups on primary outcome measures of the number of weeks and clinic visits to 50% reduction in stuttering severity. CONCLUSION: This clinical experiment challenges the assumption that the verbal contingency request for self-correction contributes to treatment efficacy. Results suggest the need for further research to explore this issue.