The Effectiveness of Cognitive Rehabilitation on Executive Functions and Severity of ‎Fluency Disorder in Children with Childhood Onset Fluency Disorder

Stuttering is one of the most common speech disorders. A large number of studies have been claimed the relationship between the various dimensions of executive functions and childhood onset fluency disorder. Additionally, its relationship with the sustained attention, response control, working memory have been measured. 

Using available sampling, 20 children between 7 to 12 years of ages with childhood onset fluency disorder were selected based on the criteria of the research, and tested by (N BACK). In order to measure working memory and continuous performance, test was used to assess sustained attention, and go no go test, to evaluate response control. Also, children with childhood onset fluency disorder were assessed by SS% test for assessing the stuttering severity. They were then randomly divided into the experimental and control groups. The experimental group exposed to 15 sessions with 45 length of cognitive-rehabilitation. Then, the post-test was taken from both groups. The experimental group was followed up to 3 months later and tests were performed again.

The results of covariance analysis and dependent t-test showed that there was a significant difference between sustained attention (p=0.022), working memory (p=0.035) and response control(P=0.039) and stuttering severity (P=0.013) in pretest and posttest in children in childhood onset fluency disorder. Semi difference is observed in executive functions (P=0.056) in the pre-test and post-test. Also, the results of bonfrroni post hoc test for assessing the sustainability of treatment over a 3 month period showed that our treatment method was effective on sustained attention, working memory and executive functions, and its effect was constant during follow-up period. But cognitive rehabilitation has been effective on response control but its effect has not been stable over time.

It can be concluded from the research findings that cognitive rehabilitation method is effective on stuttering severity and increases executive functions in children with childhood onset fluency disorder and can be used as a treatment method.