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Childhood stuttering is common; affecting 1 in 10 children during the preschool years.

While many children recover naturally from stuttering, 35% of children with early stuttering go

on to develop persistent stuttering that continues throughout life. As there is currently no way of

predicting who will recover and who will persist, early treatment is essential in order to prevent the

development of persistent stuttering.

There are currently no procedures to guide early childhood health professionals (speech language

pathologists (SLPs), health nurses, preschool teachers and educational psychologists) working

with Norwegian preschool children who stutter. Internationally, there is also a lack of agreement

regarding the most effective stuttering treatment for preschool children.

The aim of this study is to conduct a meta-analysis of stuttering treatment studies for preschool

children who stutter and the first randomised controlled trial (RCT) in Norway to investigate the

efficacy of treatment in this age group. This will be the first RCT worldwide to compare two active

treatment approaches and a control group in the field of stuttering research. The project involves

international collaboration between experts from the UK, US, Australia and Norway.

Approaches to managing early stuttering differ internationally and can be separated into two

main treatment approaches: direct and indirect. Direct treatment approaches are designed to

address a child?s speech directly while indirect approaches focus on modifying the child?s

immediate surroundings to create a fluency-inducing environment. There is clinical trial evidence

demonstrating treatment effectiveness for both direct and indirect treatment approaches, however

only one RCT has been conducted comparing the efficacy of two treatments, the Lidcombe

Program and Restart-DCM treatment. Although this clinical trial was based on a relatively large

number of participants, the study was methodologically flawed. There is therefore a paucity of RCT

evidence regarding the most efficacious stuttering treatment for preschool children worldwide.