Long-Term Follow-up of Self-Modeling as an Intervention for Stuttering

This brief article reports a long-term follow-up of the effects of self-modeling on the reduction of stuttering in two groups of students who initially evidenced different mean percentages of stuttered words. The 2-and 4-year follow-up is based on 7 students who were involved in two separate studies published in 1996 and 1998. The 3 students involved in the 1996 study who initially exhibited substantially higher mean percentages of stuttered words relative to the students involved in the 1998 study, maintained their treatment effects after 4 years. Specifically, 2 students exhibited normal fluency by evidencing at or below 4% stuttered words; the third student exhibited near fluency with 5% stuttered words. Similarly, Students 2 and 4 involved in the 1998 study maintained their treatment effects and exhibited normal fluency by evidencing at or below 4% stuttered words. The remaining 2 students (1 and 3), who were fluent at the end of the study, evidenced an increase to 7% stuttered words, which is indicative of disfluency.