Purpose: The purpose of this review article is to provide an overview of the current evidence base for the behavioral management of stuttering and associated social anxiety. Method: We overview recent research about stuttering and social anxiety in the context of contemporary cognitive models of social anxiety disorder. That emerging evidence for…

Background: Early intervention is essential healthcare for stuttering, and the translation of research findings to community settings is a potential roadblock to it. Aims: This study was designed to replicate and extend the Lidcombe Program community translation findings of O'Brian et al. (2013) but with larger participant numbers, incorporating…

Purpose: Those with anxiety use safety behaviors when attempting to prevent negative outcomes. There is evidence that these behaviors contribute to the persistence of anxiety disorders. Safety behaviors have been prominent in the cognitive behavior therapy literature during the last decade, particularly with social phobia management. However,…

Background: Many adults who stutter presenting for speech treatment experience social anxiety disorder. The presence of mental health disorders in adults who stutter has been implicated in a failure to maintain speech treatment benefits. Contemporary theories of social anxiety disorder propose that the condition is maintained by negative…

Purpose: This study adds to the Lidcombe Program evidence base by comparing individual and group treatment of preschoolers who stutter. Method: A randomized controlled trial of 54 preschoolers was designed to establish whether group delivery outcomes were not inferior to the individual model. The group arm used a rolling group model, in which a…

There are many treatments currently available for stuttering, for both children and adults. These range from direct interventions intended to reduce the severity and/or frequency of the speech behaviors of stuttering, to those intended to alleviate the anxiety and other mental health issues that can accompany the disorder. However, as there are…

Purpose: In this study, the authors investigated the efficacy of video self-modeling (VSM) following speech restructuring treatment to improve the maintenance of treatment effects. Method: The design was an open-plan, parallel-group, randomized controlled trial. Participants were 89 adults and adolescents who undertook intensive speech…

Previous research has not explored the Five Factor Model of personality among adults who stutter. Therefore, the present study investigated the five personality domains of Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness, as measured by the NEO Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI), in a sample of 93 adults seeking speech…

This report presents the results of an experimental investigation of the effects of a syllable-timed speech treatment on three stuttering preschool children. Syllable-timed speech involves speaking with minimal differentiation in linguistic stress across syllables. Three children were studied in a multiple baseline across participants design, with…

Background: Speech restructuring is an efficacious method for the alleviation of stuttered speech. However, post-treatment relapse is common. Aims: To investigate whether the use of video self-modelling using restructured stutter-free speech reduces stuttering in adults who had learnt a speech-restructuring technique and subsequently relapsed.…

Purpose: The aims of the present study were to (a) examine the rate of social phobia among adults who stutter, (b) study the effects of speech restructuring treatment on social anxiety, and (c) study the effects on anxiety and stuttering of a cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) package for social anxiety. Method: Thirty-two adults with chronic…

An Arabic version of the Public Opinion Survey of Human Attributes Inventory [POSHA-E; St Louis, K. O. (2005), a global instrument to measure public attitudes about stuttering. ("The ASHA Leader," 22, 2-13)] was administered to 424 Arab parents of preschool and school age children in 18 government schools across all six governorates in…

Knowledge of variables that predict treatment time is of benefit in deciding when to start treatment for early stuttering. To date, the only variable clearly related to treatment time with the Lidcombe Program is pre-treatment stuttering frequency. Previous studies have shown that children whose stuttering is more severe take longer to complete…

This paper reflects on the application of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to the field of stuttering. It is argued that the SFL theory may offer insight into the impact that stuttering has on language use. Two case studies are presented to illustrate the application of SFL theory. The two SFL analyses found to be of most use in this pilot…

This study investigated changes in the speech patterns of young adult male subjects when stuttering was modified by deliberately prolonging speech. Three subjects showed clinically significant stuttering reductions when using prolonged speech to reduce their stuttering. Resulting speech was perceptually stutter free. Acoustic and…