Graduation Year

2015

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

M.S.

Degree Name

Master of Science (M.S.)

Degree Granting Department

Communication Sciences and Disorders

Major Professor

Nathan Maxfield, Ph.D., CCC-SLP

Committee Member

Carolyn Ford, Ph.D., CCC-SLP

Committee Member

R. M. Barker, Ph.D.

Keywords

Children, Fluency, Intervention, Mindfulness, Stuttering

Abstract

A week-long intervention for five school-age children who stutter was implemented using techniques of fluency shaping, stuttering management, and mindfulness training. The purpose of this study was to investigate if children who stutter stuttered less frequently, stuttered with less struggle, and demonstrated changes in mindfulness measures after the completion of this week-long intervention. Pre- to post-treatment measures were analyzed by individual and group-level results. A comparative analysis between reading and narrative tasks was also performed. Findings indicate that three out of five children reduced the total number of disfluencies during the reading task, and two children reduced this total during the narrative task. Four out of five children decreased the level of struggle in both tasks. Two children improved their overall mindfulness scores; however, additional changes in sub-divisions of mindfulness varied by participant. As a group, the total number of disfluencies decreased during the reading task, while the total number of disfluencies did not change from pre- to post-treatment measures during the narrative task. The group demonstrated

improvements in mindfulness in the areas of communication attitudes, cognitive reappraisal, and expressive suppression. A comparison between reading and narrative tasks suggest that performance on these tasks approximated to one another by the end of the treatment. The results of this study should be interpreted with caution as this was a pilot study with clinical limitations; however, future studies are necessary to verify and support these findings.

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