The Illinois International Stuttering Research Program

Subtypes of Stuttering

Although the immense diversity of stuttering is apparent in many ways, a major roadblock to its effective research, diagnosis, and treatment has been the strong tendency among investigators and clinicians to view it as a single disorder. Consequently, investigators have often employed narrow one-dimensional analyses, focusing on a single parameter of stuttering (e.g., disfluency, motor skills, language, emotionality, etc.,), overlooking the multifaceted nature of the disorder. Whereas a good number of stuttering typologies have been suggested, their research base has limited, and none has been adopted by a significant number of scholars and clinicians.

Therefore, we again pose the question: Is stuttering amenable to classification? If the answer is positive, then what classification approach most accurately captures the various aspects of the disorder? And how can research proceed to delineate subtypes? To provide answers, one focus of the Illinois International Stuttering Research Program is the delineation of subtypes among children and adults who stutter.

We have approached this aim through the integration of information obtained from multiple domains that are relevant in speech and language development, namely linguistic, motoric, genetic, and social-temperament. One advantage is that these rich data are collected from a single, large corpus of preschool age children who stutter, as well as from groups of early grade school children and adults who stutter. One of the broad objectives is to examine developmental trends and pathways in the course, particularly but not exclusively, of early childhood stuttering, as various patterns of risk and/or clusters of behaviors associated with persistent or recovered stuttering emerge.

This multi-site project is conducted in several universities and centers and has enjoyed the generous funding by the National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.

Send questions and comments to:
Dr. Nicoline Ambrose
Stuttering Research Program
The Department of Speech and Hearing Science
901 S. Sixth St.
Champaign, IL 61820
Phone:217-333-2230