New publication on the impact of stuttering on preschool aged children

It has been a busy year for the EST project this far. In several upcoming blogpost we will tell you about newly published studies from researchers in the project.

You can read post doc in the EST-project Linn Stokke Guttormsen and co-authors J. Scott Yaruss and Kari-Anne Bottegård Næss newest paper “Parents' Perceptions of the Overall Impact of Stuttering on Young Children” here: https://pubs.asha.org/doi/abs/10.1044/2021_AJSLP-20-00113

In their study, an adaptation of the Overall Assessment of the Speaker's Experience of Stuttering for School-Age Children was designed to ask parents about their perceptions of the impact of stuttering on their young children. Thirty-eight parents of young children who stutter participated. Results indicated that, on average, parents perceived that stuttering affected their children negatively; stuttering was perceived by some parents to affect the children’s mood, self-confidence, and social participation during stuttering moments or periods with stuttering. Furthermore, parent reports revealed that impact of stuttering can change with communication partners or situations. Parents' perceptions of impact are important for clinicians to consider when giving recommendations for therapy, as they can provide important insight into the family's needs. It is also important assess the perspective of the children if appropriate because present findings reveal that parents may not have insight into all aspects of impact, in particular, cognitive reactions to stuttering.