Do Stuttering Preschool Children Curtail Language in the Lidcombe Program?

Isabelle Rousseau, Ann Packman, Mark Onslow and Erin McKay

The Lidcombe Program is a behavioural treatment for preschool children who stutter which is supported by Phases I, II and III clinical trial evidence. In this treatment, parents deliver verbal contingencies for stuttering and stutter-free speech during conversational exchanges with their children. The mechanism underlying the effectiveness of the program is currently unknown, although it has been suggested that children achieve fluency by curtailing their language use. This hypothesis is investigated in this project by measuring utterance length and complexity in a group of preschool children before and after treatment.