Benjamin P. Lange

The effectiveness of stuttering treatments in Germany

PURPOSE Persons who stutter (PWS) should be referred to the most effective treatments available, locally or regionally. A prospective comparison of the effects of the most common stuttering treatments in Germany is not available. Therefore, a retrospective evaluation by clients of stuttering treatments was carried out. METHOD The five most common German stuttering treatments (231 single treatment cases) were rated as to their perceived effectiveness, using a structured questionnaire, by 88 PWS recruited through various sources. The participants had received between 1 and 7 treatments for stuttering. RESULTS Two stuttering treatments (stuttering modification, fluency shaping) showed favorable and three treatments (breathing therapy, hypnosis, unspecified logopedic treatment) showed unsatisfactory effectiveness ratings. The effectiveness ratings of stuttering modification and fluency shaping did not differ significantly. The three other treatments were equally ineffective. The differences between the effective and ineffective treatments were of large effect sizes. The typical therapy biography begins in childhood with an unspecified logopedic treatment administered extensively in single and individual sessions. Available comparisons showed intensive or interval treatments to be superior to extensive treatments, and group treatments to be superior to single client treatments. CONCLUSION The stuttering treatment most often prescribed in Germany, namely a weekly session of individual treatment by a speech-language pathologist, usually with an assorted package of mostly unknown components, is of limited effectiveness. Better effectiveness can be expected from fluency shaping or stuttering modification approaches, preferably with an intensive time schedule and with group sessions. EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES Readers will be able to: (a) discuss the five most prevalent stuttering treatments in Germany; (b) summarize the effectiveness of these treatments; and (c) describe structural treatment components that seem to be preferable across different kinds of treatments.

High Prevalence of Hearing Loss at the Special Olympics: Is This Representative of People with Intellectual Disability?

BACKGROUND The Healthy Hearing (HH) programme at the Special Olympics (SO) revealed hearing disorders in between 16 and 40% of athletes. However, it is not clear whether these prevalence represents the entire population with intellectual disability. Therefore, this study compares the hearing status of SO athletes with an intellectual disability (ID) to students with ID at a special needs school. MATERIALS AND METHODS The HH screening was performed in 637 athletes (mean age 27.1 years, range 9.7-70.6 years) during the 2008 German SO Summer Games - and in 198 special needs students (mean age 12.7 years, range 6.7-20.0 years). RESULTS Twenty-two per cent of athletes and 18% of students failed the HH screening. Approximately 60% of the total participants received recommendations for further follow-up and treatment without between-group differences. CONCLUSIONS The results of the HH screening at SO events are assumed to be representative of children and adolescents with ID in special needs schools.

Pluralerwerb im Deutschen bei ­russisch- und türkischsprachigen Kindern im Vergleich mit anderen Migranten und monolingualen Muttersprachlern

Abstract The article focuses on the differences and common characteristics of the plural acquisition in German by children with Russian and Turkish mother tongues, compared with other immigrant children and Germans. Although not absolutely identical, the overgeneralization patterns of all groups appear to be very similar and obviously dependent only on the proficiency in German, without clear influences of the foreign linguistic background, the only exception being e-overgeneralizations in Russian children. Whereas immigrant children tend to account mostly for the frequency of the plural allomorphs in the input when choosing a plural marker, German children have already internalized the gender based distribution of some plural allomorphs.

Sociolinguistic factors associated with the subjectively and objectively measured language development in German preschoolers in three follow-up studies

Abstract The study aimed at an analysis of sociolinguistic variables associated with the language acquisition progress between the first and the second test sessions in three follow-up studies with German preschool children. In all three samples, children acquiring German, both Germans and immigrants, were tested twice with validated language tests within a time span of several months. Furthermore, language skills of children were judged by daycare center teachers. The language competence of normally developed test subjects did not change much between two test sessions, whereas children acquiring German under more challenging circumstances were still in the process of active development, mostly due to the daycare center attendance, language courses, and medical therapies. Therefore, contra-intuitively at first sight, the following factors were associated with the quick progress in language development (floor effect): bad school marks for the language competence at the beginning of the daycare attendance, low age at the first test session, not regular attendance of the daycare centers, late contact to the German language, foreign language(s) spoken at home, medical issues, and some other unfavorable language acquisition conditions.