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From: J. Scott Yaruss
Date: 10/12/00
Time: 8:21:02 AM
Remote Name: 205.201.41.224
Keeping in mind what Woody said about a finding that there is a correlation between severity and recovery in therapy, I want to throw in one thing that I have learned from the research of Yairi and colleagues referenced by Nan Ratner...
Specifically, this is that some children can exhibit significant initial severity -- often associated with a rather sudden onset of stuttering -- yet still show a complete, seemingly natural recovery from stuttering. Many of these children may not have been studied in prior research because the resolution of the stuttering may have occurred within the first few months -- or even weeks -- of onset, before parents and others had time to get sufficiently concerned to contact a speech-language pathologist. So, these high-severity but high-recovery children may may have been underrepresented.
Some evidence in favor of this interpretation comes from a retrospective study conducted by Ed Conture, Lisa LaSalle, and myself, in which we examined the reported time since onset of stuttering for 100 3-6 year-old children who were referred to a University clinic because of their parents concerns that they might be stuttering. The average time since onset of stuttering reported prior to the first evaluation of stuttering for the 85 children for whom such data were available was 18 months -- this is a VERY long time, in my opinion, that parents waited to determine whether their child was at risk for stuttering.
We know from Yairi's data, and other sources, that many children exhibit a seemingly natural recovery from stuttering within the first 6 months, so some children may have shown significant initial severity but still recovered, as Yairi's data show.
So, I've rambled a bit, but the bottom line in my book is that the correlation between initial severity and recovery is far from perfect...we still need more research to identify the risk factors that contribute to the likelihood that a young child exhibiting early stuttering will continue to do so.
Hope this helps. S