Stuttering and Apraxia of Speech: the Efficacy of an Intervention Program

The Speech Prosody of People With Stuttering and Developmental Apraxia: the Efficacy of an Intervention Program

Subjects' utterances were submitted to acoustic analysis before and after the intervention program applied on prosodic basis.

The study has the aim of developing knowledge, methodology and technique in the prosody area, for its application on the speech therapy, with the assistance of a feedback system - with WinpitchPro (Philippe Martin). A database was constituted on the basis of a patterned corpus (EUROM1) by its translation, recording and editing on .wav format. Throughout model-sentences, an experimental intervention program initiates with the participation of 2 adults with stuttering problem and 2 with apraxia of speech. The efficacy of the therapeutic procedure is tested on the basis of the acoustical and the statistical analyses which have compared the first and the second speech samples taken before and after the twenty (20) therapy sessions held in a prosody approach only.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Clinical diagnosis of stuttering
• Clinical diagnosis of apraxia of speech
• 18 years of age or older
• Portuguese native language
• Agreement by the participant to enroll on 20 therapy sessions scheduled in a 3 month period

Exclusion Criteria:

• History of major medical illness unrelated to primary diagnosis of developmental stuttering and developmental apraxia of speech
• Significant abnormalities on general physical and neurological examination unrelated to primary diagnosis