<ABSTRACT>

The Effect of Parental Education on Reducing Disfluencies of Their Preschool Children who Stutter

kim yun suk
Advisor: Prof. Shin MoonJa, PH.D.
speech and language pathology
Graduate School of Chosun University


This study was conducted in the parents of preschool children who stuttered for the purpose of determining how the group receiving parental education differed in the frequency of children''s stuttering from the group receiving no parental education and how these two groups differed in parents'' attitudinal, speech, and behavioral changes.
For this purpose, three- to six-year-olds who stuttered and their parents were divided into the experimental group receiving parental education and the control group receiving no parental education.
The group receiving parental education got information about stuttering and how to help children relieve stuttering. Before and two weeks after the experiment, the frequency of children''s stuttering was measured in two activities: parent-child interactive play activity and speech activity based on a picture book in both groups.
The parents indicated their attitude, speech, and behavior on a scale before and after the experiment and their changes were assessed.
For statistical processing of data, the mean and standard deviation of the differences between before and after the experiment were estimated in each group and Mann-Whitney U test, which is nonparametric test, was performed to correct the significance level along with Wilcoxon signed rank test.
To determine correlation among the variables, correlation analysis was performed using Spearman correlation coefficient. The results of the analysis were as follows:
First, as for the differences in the scores from pretest and posttest between children in the group receiving parental education and those in the group receiving no parental education, the former showed a significant decrease in the frequency of stuttering in the situations of interactive play and speech based on a picture book, whereas the latter showed no significant decrease.
While no significant inter-group difference was found in interactive play, there were significant inter-group differences in speech based on a picture book. Children in the experimental group receiving parental education tended to show a greater decrease in the frequency of stuttering than the control group.

Second, differences in the attitudinal and behavioral changes were measured between parents receiving parental education and those receiving no parental education in pretest and posttest. The results showed statistically significant variation neither in the experimental group nor in the control group.
Lastly, as for correlation between parents'' attitudinal and behavioral changes and variation in the frequency of children''s stuttering, correlation was found between parents'' changes and frequency variation in the situation of interactive play in the experimental group. In other words, changes in the attitudinal and behavioral changes of parents led to the decrease in the frequency of children''s stuttering.
Children in the group receiving parental education showed lower levels of disfrequencies than those in the group receiving no parental education in speech based on a picture book.
Since these results show the changes in children''s stuttering, which were found by a session of measurement two weeks after parental education, further research should be conducted to see if fluency is maintained over time and if it is constantly generalized in other situations.
Since the research was conducted in only a few children, it is also necessary to conduct research in more participants with the objective of generalizing the result that indirect therapy using parental education is helpful in giving intervention to preschool children.
No consideration was given to the differences between the frequency of stuttering and detailed factors of the parents'' attitude, speech, and behavior scale or to personal variables of parents and others. Accordingly, further research needs to examine the relations between these detailed factors and the frequency of stuttering found in parent-child interaction with the aim of providing more clinically useful information.