Outcome of stuttering therapy on Egyptian school-aged children using the speak freely program

Abstract

Abstract Background: The training program presented depends on improving the physical dimension for stutters by teaching both stuttering modification and fluency-shaping techniques based on the Speak Freely Program. Aim of the work: This study is designed to adapt and apply the ‘Speak Freely Program’ of stuttering intervention for Arabic-speaking school-aged stuttering children and to explore its effectiveness as a therapeutic tool. Subjects and methods: The present work was carried out on 25 stuttering children of both sexes in the age range of 7–18 years. The participants were divided into two age groups: group I (7-12 years) and group II (12.1–18 years). Each participant was subjected to the protocol of stuttering evaluation as follows: (a) assessment of history and analysis of complaints; (b) observation of features of stuttered speech (core behavior, secondary reactions, devices to cancel stuttering, escape, antiexpectancy) and overt behaviors; (c) Stuttering Severity Instrument (SSI-3) was used to assess moments of stuttering in a speech sample and reading aloud; (d) psychometric battery was used to compare between pretherapeutic and post-therapeutic anxiety and depression scale; (d) two objective evaluations were used: first, spectral analysis to measure the voice onset time, formant transition, and vowel duration for all participants’ fluent productions of monosyllabic words with initial /t/ and /d/, and second, Visipitch to measure fundamental frequency, relative average perturbation, amplitude, shimmer, voiced percent (voiced%), voiceless%, and pause% in an automatic, reading, and spontaneous. Results: The study showed that the younger stutterers achieved better outcome with the therapeutic program. The results of the SSI-3 and the anxiety and the depressive state of the studied children, respectively, showed a highly significant difference between the pretherapeutic and the post-therapeutic values of the two groups studied. Formant transition of the (voiced and voiceless) and the vowel duration of (voiceless) monosyllabic words showed a difference after therapy. Both groups showed higher post-therapeutic values for the voiced%, voiceless%, and the amplitude measurements. Conclusion: To conclude, stuttering therapy alters the acoustic properties of stutterers’ fluent speech concomitant with reducing stuttering frequency speech samples.