CENTRAL OF CHILDRENS STUTTERING WITH RESPONSE-CONTINGENT TIME-OUT - BEHAVIORAL, PERCEPTUAL, AND ACOUSTIC DATA

Many stuttering treatments incorporate contingencies for stuttering th at are thought to contribute to treatment effectiveness. One contingen cy used in a number of treatment programs for children is time-out (TO ) From speaking. However, although TO has been shown to control stutte ring in adults there are no clear demonstrations of this effect in chi ldren. One aim of the present study was to demonstrate in the laborato ry that TO reduces stuttering in children. Three schoolage children sp oke in a single-subject ABA experiment. In the B phase, a red light wa s illuminated for 5 seconds when the subject stuttered, during which t ime the subject stopped talking. Two of the three children showed clea r reductions in stuttering in response to TO. The second aim of the st udy was to detect whether the children who responded to TO adopted an unusual speech pattern in order to control their stuttering. Listeners did not detect any differences between the perceptually stutter-free speech of baseline conditions and that of TO conditions, and a subsequ ent acoustic analysis revealed a reduction in the variability of vowel duration during TO in one subject and no changes in the other. The th eoretical and clinical implications of the findings are discussed.