Spontaneous Recovery from Stuttering

Abstract

To investigate the puzzle of the nonpersistence of stuttering in many cases in which it begins, structured interview- and sentence-completion data were gathered on all incoming University of California, Berkeley, students during September 1964. Thirty-two spontaneously recovered stutterers were compared with 32 active stutterers and the normal controls, and a computer bivariate association analysis showed: (1) four out of five recover from stuttering spontaneously; (2) fewer of those who had received public school speech therapy recovered from stuttering; (3) fewer of those who had ever been severe recovered spontaneously; (4) no familial incidence pattern with either group of stutterers as compared to controls; (5) no differences in reported handedness in stutterers or their families; (6) improvement attributed to self-acceptance and role acceptance; (7) there appear to be many different paths to recovery.