COMPONENT 11. TRANSFER AND MAINTENANCE OF FLUENCY

Rationale: Fluent speech is generally easily achieved within the clinical environment. However, this fluency is of little value unless the speaker is able to transfer his/her new skills into his/her normal communication environment.

Research:

Adams (1991) - transfer activities should be conducted systematically and must involve active participation of the clinician and significant adults in the child's environment.

Gregory (1991) - the school environment is an excellent place forextending the use of improved speech. This transfer of speech skills is facilitated early on in the therapy process.

Peters and Guitar (1991) - the goal of this phase of therapy is to transfer the child's fluency from the therapy situation to a wide variety of other settings and other people.

Ryan & Van Kirk (1974) - are convinced that those clients who are enrolled in maintenance programs have better fluency than those clients who are not enrolled.

Activities/Techniques:

For Transfer:

1) use ongoing strategies 2) define a hierarchy of situations from easy to difficult
3) use different physical movements
4) increase audience size and encourage "quests" in therapy

For Maintenance:

1) weekly or monthly telephone checks with the parents
2) sessions are reduced to weekly, biweekly, monthly, etc.
3) intermittent home practice in structured and unstructured activities
4) have the client make a tape of several conversations at home. Have him/her grade their performance on several areas such as rate, soft contacts, and stretches; and then bring the tape to therapy so the clinician can give his/her feedback.