{"title":"Assessing Childhood Stuttering Recovery: Incorporating Self-Identification and Caregiver/Clinician Reports Through Adolescence.","authors":"Shanley Treleaven, Saralyn Rubsam, Megan Sheppard, J Scott Yaruss, Soo-Eun Chang","doi":"10.1044/2025_JSLHR-24-00501","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Purpose: </strong>Investigating stuttering recovery rates can be challenging, as recovery status can change based on self-report, later recovery, or relapse. In this study, we contacted previous child participants from our longitudinal studies (now older children to young adults) who were originally assigned persistence/recovery status guided by clinician and caregiver reports only. Their stuttering status as adolescents and young adults was re-evaluated based on currently assessed clinician and caregiver reports, observable stuttering severity assessments, and self-reports.</p><p><strong>Method: </strong>Seventy-nine participants were contacted based on their current age and time since their last longitudinal study visit (> 2 years). Of these, 23 participated in this follow-up investigation. Participants and caregivers completed follow-up questionnaires, and participants' speech samples were recorded for offline stuttering disfluency ratings by a speech-language pathologist.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>When considering participant and caregiver reports as well as clinician report based on stuttering severity ratings, recovery status changed for nine of the 23 participants (39.13%). All nine self-identified as recovered, although four of the nine were judged to exhibit very mild stuttering. Five of the nine were viewed to be late recovery cases, occurring after the conclusion of the prior longitudinal study. The presence of stuttering behaviors was often reported consistently across clinician and participant/caregiver reports (the basis for \"persistence\" judgments by the clinician), but in eight cases (34.78%), participants did not self-identify as stutterers despite reported presence of stuttering.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Our results highlight the importance of assessing stuttering beyond early childhood to examine recovery rates. Furthermore, self-reports on stuttering status reveal that the concept of recovery is nuanced: The presence of overt stuttering does not necessarily correlate with self-identification of stuttering. These findings have implications on how best to define stuttering persistence and recovery for future research and clinical practice.</p><p><strong>Supplemental material: </strong>https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.28654565.</p>","PeriodicalId":51254,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research","volume":"68 5","pages":"2218-2235"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2000,"publicationDate":"2025-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12120832/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1044/2025_JSLHR-24-00501","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2025/4/23 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"AUDIOLOGY & SPEECH-LANGUAGE PATHOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Purpose: Investigating stuttering recovery rates can be challenging, as recovery status can change based on self-report, later recovery, or relapse. In this study, we contacted previous child participants from our longitudinal studies (now older children to young adults) who were originally assigned persistence/recovery status guided by clinician and caregiver reports only. Their stuttering status as adolescents and young adults was re-evaluated based on currently assessed clinician and caregiver reports, observable stuttering severity assessments, and self-reports.
Method: Seventy-nine participants were contacted based on their current age and time since their last longitudinal study visit (> 2 years). Of these, 23 participated in this follow-up investigation. Participants and caregivers completed follow-up questionnaires, and participants' speech samples were recorded for offline stuttering disfluency ratings by a speech-language pathologist.
Results: When considering participant and caregiver reports as well as clinician report based on stuttering severity ratings, recovery status changed for nine of the 23 participants (39.13%). All nine self-identified as recovered, although four of the nine were judged to exhibit very mild stuttering. Five of the nine were viewed to be late recovery cases, occurring after the conclusion of the prior longitudinal study. The presence of stuttering behaviors was often reported consistently across clinician and participant/caregiver reports (the basis for "persistence" judgments by the clinician), but in eight cases (34.78%), participants did not self-identify as stutterers despite reported presence of stuttering.
Conclusions: Our results highlight the importance of assessing stuttering beyond early childhood to examine recovery rates. Furthermore, self-reports on stuttering status reveal that the concept of recovery is nuanced: The presence of overt stuttering does not necessarily correlate with self-identification of stuttering. These findings have implications on how best to define stuttering persistence and recovery for future research and clinical practice.
期刊介绍：
Mission: JSLHR publishes peer-reviewed research and other scholarly articles on the normal and disordered processes in speech, language, hearing, and related areas such as cognition, oral-motor function, and swallowing. The journal is an international outlet for both basic research on communication processes and clinical research pertaining to screening, diagnosis, and management of communication disorders as well as the etiologies and characteristics of these disorders. JSLHR seeks to advance evidence-based practice by disseminating the results of new studies as well as providing a forum for critical reviews and meta-analyses of previously published work.
Scope: The broad field of communication sciences and disorders, including speech production and perception; anatomy and physiology of speech and voice; genetics, biomechanics, and other basic sciences pertaining to human communication; mastication and swallowing; speech disorders; voice disorders; development of speech, language, or hearing in children; normal language processes; language disorders; disorders of hearing and balance; psychoacoustics; and anatomy and physiology of hearing.
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