What is it about?
Studies demonstrate that altering the feedback that individuals receive when hearing their own voices can result in immediate reduction in stuttering at normal speaking rates without training, mental effort, or abnormal-sounding or abnormally slow speech according to advertising for one company that offers desktop devices for speech-language pathologists to use with young children (Casa Futura, 2018). In 2005, a case study was conducted with an eleven-year-old boy who stuttered to determine if DAF was an effective treatment. After 14 hours of therapy utilizing DAF along with counseling (mediated learning), stuttering decreased by 4.8%. One year later, formal speech testing indicated that the gains from the previous period were sustained. Therapy was reinitiated to include the DAF, mediated learning, and non speech motor exercises recommended for inclusion by the company. There were minimal additional reductions in fluency (4.1% as compared to 4.8%); however, the take away is that DAF was effective as a treatment, though the influence of motor exercises was inconclusive.
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Why is it important?
Stuttering is a complex disorder. Moreover, the literature is often a source of contradictory conclusions about what does and does not "work." This supposed contradiction may be influenced by the particular characteristics of the individual who stutters that may render that individual better-suited to a particular therapeutic approach. Moreover, researcher-clinicians who stutter may bring distinctively different frames of reference to the study of stuttering and what resulted in their effective management. It is critical to revisit the notion that "one size does not fit all" when it comes to effective stuttering treatments and to consider a broader range of treatments for inclusion in clinical trials, with the authors' admonition to consider DAF with counseling, particularly notions of mediated learning (coaching the individual to influence their thinking about talking).
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This page is a summary of: A CASE STUDY OF MEDIATED LEARNING, DELAYED AUDITORY FEEDBACK, AND MOTOR REPATTERNING TO REDUCE STUTTERING, Perceptual and Motor Skills, January 2005, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.2466/pms.101.5.63-71.
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