Role of Family in Persistence versus Recovery of Childhood Stuttering

Abstract

tuttering is a fluency of speech disorder, identified via involuntary interruptions in the flow of speech. This disorder is successfully treated in 70% of children who are diagnosed with it and the remaining 30% continue to experience this problem in the long term. The incidence rate of this disorder is 5% among preschool children and about 1% among adults. Although the cause of stuttering has not been identified, a multifactorial hypothesis of stuttering has gained acceptance (Shafiei et al., 2019). The etiology of stuttering is multifactorial, as the result of a dynamic interaction between a wide and nonlinear spectrum of risk factors caused during child development. Understanding these risk factors is essential to diagnose it early and correctly and so, to provide a more effective intervention for children who stutter (de Oliveira, 2013). Most clinicians rate stuttering severity quantitatively by counting the frequency of the stuttering expressed by the percentage of stuttered syllables per minute. Although this method appears to be objective and convenient to use, variations in the frequency of stuttering from situation to another make it difficult to depend upon frequency of the stuttering alone while rating stuttering severity. Other clinicans use the Suttering Severity Instrument (SSI) by Riley (Yairi et al., 2011).