Pre-Therapy Adaptation of Stuttering and Its Relation to Speech Measures of Therapy Progress
Three measures of stuttering adaptation were obtained on 20 stutterers prior to the beginning of an eight-week residential therapy program. Following therapy each subject was evaluated using six scores which represented changes in speaking rate and frequency of stuttering during oral reading and in self-formulated speech. The results showed that less than half of the stutterers demonstrated a significant adaptation trend (A t ), and only 12 of 20 showed significant normal deviate scores (A s ) of adaptation. Partial correlation coefficients were significant in a negative direction between pretherapy percentage (A p ) and trend (A t ) adaptation measures and post-therapy scores showing increment in reading and speaking rate. It appears that adaptation is neither consistendy nor highly related to speech measures of therapy progress. A rationale is suggested for the negative correlation of adaptation and therapy change scores.