Abstract

Objectives
to investigate the effect of auditory temporal processing training on the alleviation of stuttering severity in children who stutter (CWS) diagnosed with auditory temporal processing (ATP) disorders.

Materials & Methods
Thirty-one (31) CWS diagnosed with ATP disorders participated in this study (intervention group: 17 participants between 7 to 12 years old; control group: 14 participants between 8 to 12 years old). The ATP test and SSI-3 were examined before, after 12 sessions (about 540 minutes) training, and three months following the conclusion of the intervention.

Result
According to the results, ATP improved significantly in the intervention group after auditory temporal training and the differences between the intervention and control group were significant (p<0.05). The improvement of ATP skills remained stable in the post-training evaluation after three months (p>0.05). Although the SSI-3 score was further improved in the intervention group, but there was no significant difference between two groups (p=0.984).

Conclusions
The findings revealed that ATP training acted as a complementary therapy alleviating stuttering severity of CWS with ATP disorders to some extent.

Introduction 

Stuttering is a well-known speech fluency disorder with primary symptoms such as involuntary and abnormal repetitions and prolongations of sounds, syllables, words, phrases, and silent pauses that disrupt the rhythmic flow of speech(1). With a prevalence rate of 2-5%, this disorder emerges mainly at 3-6 years of age nearby 1% of this population will continue to have persistent stuttering until adulthood (2). Stuttering is neurodevelopmentally (3), associated with several factors(4). Numerous studies and theories point to defective neural centers for speech control, auditory processing disorders, genetic and language impairments, and other cognitive, emotional, and social processing as the underlying causes of stuttering (5).

Currently, the basic neurogenic knowledge of stuttering is not directly linked with clinical programs(6). More promising and effective management and treatment of stuttering appear to be more logically rooted in its potential neural mechanisms (6, 7). Several studies and theories highlight the auditory system, its associated processing, and its roles, which might be the structures linked with this disorder (8).

Results

Demographic data for each group are shown in (Table 1). Children in both groups had a Stuttering Severity Instrument-3 (SSI-3) range of very mild to moderate (score 8-27).

۳٫۱٫ Analyzing the Effect of Auditory Temporal Training on ATP Test Scores

In this section, data related to ATP tests before, immediately, and three months after auditory temporal training are compared between the intervention and control groups.

۳٫۱٫۱٫ Duration pattern test

Table 2 shows a significant difference between the three interventions Duration pattern tests measurement levels (Table 2). The pairwise comparison test, by considering the Bonferroni adjustment indicated that the post-training (session 13) scores of the intervention group improved remarkably (right and left ear: P<0.001). An improvement was also observed in the control group, albeit non-significant (right ear: P=1.0, left ear: P=0.468). The analysis of the resulting stability revealed persistent improvement in the intervention group based on the post-training evaluation after three months (right ear: P=0.005, left ear: P=0.012). No significant difference was observed in the control group’s scores after three months (right ear: P=0.396, left ear: P=1.0). The between-subject primary effect test, found a significant difference between the intervention and control groups across the three measurement levels (P<0.001). The interaction of time and group was substantial (P<0.001) (Table 2).