Stuttering or stammering usually begins when a child is three or four years old, with boys three times more likely to suffer from it.
While there is no cure for the speech impediment, researchers at the Australian Stuttering Research Center, University of Sydney, developed and evaluated an early treatment program they say improves the problem.
In a report in the British Medical Journal,
The program, named after a Sydney suburb, is a behavioral treatment for young children, administered by a parent with guidance from a speech pathologist.
The parent conducts the treatments, learning to measure the child's stuttering on a 10-point scale. During weekly visits, the speech pathologist examines the child's progress.
Once the stuttering has disappeared or notably diminished, the second stage of the program, which aims to maintain the improvement over one year, begins.
Onslow and his team tested the method in a study involving 54 children. Twenty-nine received the treatment; 25 acted as the control group.
Only 15 percent of the youngsters in the control group attained a minimal amount of stuttering, compared to 77 percent of those who were given treatment.
Some children naturally recover from stuttering, but researchers say identifying them is tough and starting treatment early on during pre-school years seems to be most effective.
Onslow adds, if the disorder continues into the school age years the child is exposed to a greater risk of experiencing chronic stuttering for the rest of his/her life.
Stuttering may be linked to a variety of causes, including genetics, signaling problems between the brain and nerves and muscles, and developmental difficulties.
