The purpose of this investigation was to examine the combined effects of educational kinesiology tasks and stuttering treatment on the fluency of a pre-school child who stutters.
This paper details a case study. After the initial diagnosis of a 3-year; 5-month old male with a very severe fluency disorder as indicated by the SSI-4, four months of a modified version of the Lidcombe program for stuttering was completed. After 4 ½ months of receiving this treatment, the participant began receiving occupational therapy services in addition to speech services for two additional months. The occupational services incorporated educational kinesiology tasks. Measures of fluency were obtained throughout the intervention stages.
Fluency measures indicated no significant decrease in stuttered syllable proportions during the initial four-month treatment period. However, significant decreases in stuttered syllable proportions during the combined treatments were documented. The participant’s fluency levels were determined to be within normal limits after two months of the combined treatments and he was discharged from treatment.
Although natural recovery is common during the participant’s age group, the results of this study indicated that the incorporation of movement-type exercises into fluency treatment might lead to greater gains in fluency. It is possible that these movement tasks recruit and stabilize neural function in regions of the brain such as the cerebellum which has been shown to exhibit signs of dysfunction in people who stutter. Future research should be conducted with larger sample sizes in order to investigate the generalizability of these findings.
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