Stuttering is a communication disorder that disrupts the normal flow of speech, by repetition or delay of sounds, syllables or words. According to The Stuttering Foundation, stuttering normally starts between 2 1/2 and 5 years, affects over a million Americans.
People who stutter experience physical tension, embarrassment, anxiety and fear about speaking. Now, a test can detect very early children at higher risks of stuttering.
Professor Peter Howell and his team from University College of London earlier developed a model- Stuttering Severity Instrument Version 3 (SSI-3) to detect 8-year-old children at higher risk of stuttering during their teenage days.
In the current study, a team of researchers from Wellcome Trust, led by Howell, understanding the importance of early intervention in treating the speaking difficulties, initiated to check effectiveness of the model in screening primary school children.
They included 222 children with stutter and 103 fluent children to develop the model and confirmed the findings with 272 children with stutter and 25 fluent children aged between five and eight.
At the end of the study, the model was found effective in differentiating children, aged five (96 percent) with stutter and fluent children (83 percent).
"For a screening tool to be used it effectively, it needs to meet the rigorous standards for accurately identifying children who stutter separately from children who are fluent. We found that this method can do just that," professor Howell, said in a news release. "If we can identify children at risk of stuttering, then we can offer appropriate interventions to help them early on. Primary school is a key time in a child's development and any help in tackling potential communication problems could make a big difference to the child's life."
Findings of the study have been published in the Journal of Fluency Disorders.
Winston Churchill (Prime Minister of Great Britain World War II), Charles Darwin (Naturalist and author of The Origin of Species), Rowan Atkinson (British actor who plays Mr. Bean), Bruce Willis (Actor) and Marilyn Monroe (Actress) are some of the famous personalities with stuttering disorder.
