Write a 7 pages paper on a critical review of protocols for the diagnostic assessment of dysfluency.

Write a 7 pages paper on a critical review of protocols for the diagnostic assessment of dysfluency. While the older diagnostic approaches (primary, secondary, phase III) focused on the full range of degrees of stuttering and not just on beginning stuttering, the newer protocols have one important difference in that they try to identify the child who is just beginning to stutter, or focuses on identifying a chronically stuttering child or someone who might stutter later (Gordon & Luper, 1992). The rationale for the use of a differential diagnostic protocol is based on the fact that there is a high rate of recovery among those who were stutterers at one point of time. about 40-80% of stutterers can have a spontaneous recovery (Bloodstein, 1981). This essay is a critical review of protocols for the diagnostic assessment of dysfluency.

The Protocol for Differentiating the Incipient Stutterer provides a systematic method for making specific observations about speech fluency (Pindzola & Dorenda, 1986.) The clinician tries to identify and categorize eight types of auditory behaviors (a type of disfluency, size of speech unit affected, frequencies of disfluencies, duration of disfluencies, audible effort, rhythm/tempo/speed of disfluencies, the intrusion of schwa vowel during repetitions, and audible learned behaviors) and records it on the Protocol (Pindzola & Dorenda, 1986). With the help of a grid, the clinician can then automatically determine whether the behavior is normal, questionable, or indicative of stuttering (Pindzola & Dorenda, 1986). Although a failure in any particular category is not necessarily an indication of a fluency problem, the presence of many questionable behaviors is suggestive of it or indicates the need to monitor the child’s fluency (Pindzola & Dorenda, 1986). While the diagnosis is made on the basis of the eight auditory behaviors, supportive information is obtained from the remaining sections of the protocol (i.e., visual evidence and historical/psychological indicators) (Pindzola & Dorenda, 1986). The greatest indicators of incipient stuttering are probably provided by the first five of the eight behaviors.