Maintenance of Fluency in Extra-Clinical Settings: Lack of Empirical Data

Glen Tellis¹, Michelle Henning¹, and Cari Tellis^2
1Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Dept. of Special Education, 259 Davis Hall, Indiana, PA I 5 705
²University of Pittsburgh, Dept. of Communication Disorders

SUMMARY

The long-term maintenance of fluency is the goal of many stuttering therapy programs. Thirty-two years of articles were reviewed to determine how many maintenance studies were conducted. Studies were reviewed for: gender, age, therapy techniques, study duration, and design. Results indicate that there is an acute shortage of published maintenance studies. The review yielded only 25 treatment studies that mentioned maintenance procedures. In the studies that included the maintenance stage of therapy, however, the authors did not agree about the amount, type, and duration of the maintenance programs. More research is needed to address issues in maintenance and relapse.
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