Australian and United States Perspectives on Stuttering in Preschool Children

Abstract

One aspect of current treatment practices for early stuttering is that clinicians in two countries have, in essence, diametrically opposed treatment practices. In this paper we suggest some historical reasons for this situation. One reason is that stuttering treatment practices in Australia were not influenced by academics who stuttered. Another reason is that, in comparison to the United States, Australia has had a short line of descent in thinking about the clinical problem of stuttering. Further, the Australians involved in that line of descent were independent of theoretical developments in the United States. We argue that this situation has considerable implications for the future development of early intervention with stuttering, and the development of the field will be impeded if it is not resolved. We argue that one resolution will be for research to show that the two treatment approaches produce equivalent results, in which case, the field can develop by means of exploration of how apparently opp...