Speech Naturalness of Recovered and Relapsed Persons with Stuttering Following Treatment

Abstract

Relapse is an ever-present concern for those in recovery from stuttering, and also for the professionals who treat them. Recovery can be defined as the restoration to a former or better condition whereas Relapse is defined as the recurrence of symptoms after a period of improvement (Webster, 1979). The main aim of the present study was to provide a preliminary data, comparing the speech naturalness of recovered and relapsed persons with stuttering (PWS) following treatment.

The participants (age range 18 to 38 years) were selected on the basis of inclusion and exclusion criteria and were asked to report after 3 months and 6 months post treatment follow-up evaluations. A total of twenty two participants reported after 3 months and nineteen participants reported after 6 month post treatment follow-ups.

Spontaneous speech samples were collected using audio/video recording of the participant during the evaluations. Multidimensional speech naturalness scale (Kanchan, 1997) and recorded speech samples were provided to three judges i.e., experienced speech and language pathologists (SLPs). The judges were asked to analyze and perceptually rate the naturalness of provided speech samples on the basis of different speech parameters given in the scale. Results of the present study showed a significant difference between recovered and relapsed group of persons with stuttering following treatment across different speech parameters.

The present study concludes that recovered persons with stuttering showed a perceptually more natural sounding speech across all the parameters as compared to relapsed persons with stuttering following treatment.