Assessing Childhood Stuttering Recovery: Incorporating Self-Identification and Caregiver/Clinician Reports Through Adolescence

Purpose: Investigating stuttering recovery rates can be challenging, as recovery status can change based on self-report, later recovery, or relapse. In this study, we contacted previous child participants from our longitudinal studies (now older children to young adults) who were originally assigned persistence/recovery status guided by clinician and caregiver reports only. Their stuttering status as adolescents and young adults was re-evaluated based on currently assessed clinician and care-giver reports, observable stuttering severity assessments, and self-reports. Method: Seventy-nine participants were contacted based on their current age and time since their last longitudinal study visit (> 2 years). Of these, 23 partici-pated in this follow-up investigation. Participants and caregivers completed follow-up questionnaires, and participants’ speech samples were recorded for offline stuttering disfluency ratings by a speech-language pathologist. Results: When considering participant and caregiver reports as well as clinician report based on stuttering severity ratings, recovery status changed for nine of the 23 participants (39.13%). All nine self-identified as recovered, although four of the nine were judged to exhibit very mild stuttering. Five of the nine were viewed to be late recovery cases, occurring after the conclusion of the prior longitudinal study. The presence of stuttering behaviors was often reported consistently across clinician and participant/caregiver reports (the basis for “persistence” judgments by the clinician), but in eight cases (34.78%), participants did not self-identify as stutterers despite reported presence of stuttering. Conclusions: Our results highlight the importance of assessing stuttering beyond early childhood to examine recovery rates. Furthermore, self-reports on stuttering status reveal that the concept of recovery is nuanced: The presence of overt stuttering does not necessarily correlate with self-identification of stuttering. These findings have implications on how best to define stuttering persistence and recovery for future research and clinical practice.