Long-Term Outcome of Early Intervention for Stuttering

This paper reports the long-term outcome of treatment from two previous studies: Onslow, Costa, and Rue (1990), and Onslow, Andrews, and Lincoln (1994). These studies evaluated the effect of a parent-administered, operant, nonprogrammed stuttering treatment (The Lidcombe Programme) when used with preschool-age children who stuttered. The original studies provided outcome data on 4 and 12 children, respectively, until 12 months posttreatment. This study provides outcome data on the children at 2 to 7 years posttreatment. Additionally, data were collected 1 to 4 years posttreatment on a comparable clinical population who received the same treatment. The subjects in this study were 43 children who had been treated for stuttering between 2 and 5 years of age. Parents were requested to make three 10-minute recordings of their child's speech each year for 3 years. They were instructed to record their child talking to a family member at home, talking to a non-family member outside the home, and to make a covert recording of the child speaking to a different family member. Questionnaires were sent to the parents at the same time as the tapes. Near-zero stuttering levels were achieved posttreatment and were maintained in the long-term. These results suggest that preschool-age children treated for stuttering may not need to re-enter treatment for up to 7 years after their initial treatment.