A Case Selection Strategy for Young Disfluent Children

Most listeners appear to take little notice of the pauses, interjections, repeti­ tions, and prolongations present in the ut­ terances of normal speakers. Such disrup­ tions in the flow of speech, if noted at all, are often characterized as "normal disfluencies." Some children and adults repeat and interject "er" and "uh" so fre­ quently that they are considered by those around them as disfluent speakers but not as stutterers. The speech disruptions of a few speakers, however, are not accepted as normal by their listeners or by themselves, and these speakers are usual­ ly identified as stutterers by most listeners. Nevertheless, identification of stutterers during the early stages of onset or when manifestations are relatively mild can pose significant diagnostic problems for speech-language pathologists. Perhaps the most perplexing of such problems is deciding which of those children who ap­ pear to be at-risk for becoming chronic stutterers should be seen for therapy. This paper will examine the information available on stuttering onset and recovery and will propose a strategy for case selec­ tion based on that information.