Behavior Assessment Battery for School-Age Children Who Stutter

The Behavior Assessment Battery (BAB) is a multi-dimensional set of inter-related, evidence-based, self-report tests that provide normative data for children between the ages of six and fifteen. The Battery has evolved and been refined over many years and has been used with an innumerable number of clients all over the world. The test procedures include: The Speech Situation Checklists (SSC-ER and SSC-SD) - for evaluating a child's emotional reaction to, and speech disruption in a range of speech situations The Behavior Checklist (BCL) - reveals the particular coping responses that a child uses to deal with dysfluency The Communication Attitude Test (CAT) - for measuring a child's attitude about his or her speech These self-report test procedures provide speech pathologists and their professional colleagues - including teachers, psycho- and neurolinguists, clinical and educational psychologists, behavior therapists, and pediatricians - with a multi-dimensional view of how a child is affected by how he or she feels, reacts to, and thinks about his or her speech. Through the eyes of the child whose fluency is problematic, the BAB test procedures provide a multi-dimensional picture of the speech-related aspects of the child's world that only the child can validly supply. By evaluating a child's overall score on the SSC-ER, SSC-SD, BCL and CAT and his or her reaction to the particular items that make up these test procedures, clinicians can determine the treatment strategies and tactics, that are most likely to be successful. This battery serves to give shape to therapy by providing the therapist with clear-cut indications of a child's speech-associated strengths and weaknesses and his or her particular needs. Beautifully presented in a convenient and handy boxed set, the Behavior Assessment Battery comprises: Test Manual, Speech Situation Checklists, Behavior Checklist, Communication Attitude Test, Test Forms, Norm Sheet, Scoring Key. FROM THE AUTHORS The self-report measures of the Behavior Assessment Battery are, in part, an outgrowth of the fact that there is no universally-agreed upon definition of stuttering. The count of speech disruption displayed by a child is known to vary markedly, even among fluency specialists, is often unreliable, and thus of questionable validity relative to diagnostic determination and the measurement of clinical improvement. The identification of a child as one who stutters involves more than the presence of dysfluency even when limited to the within-word repetitions and prolongations that listeners tend to regard as atypical and different from normal. Though dysfluencies are obviously necessary for a child to be identified as one who stutters, it is fully evident that they are not sufficient to do so. Moreover, children who stutter are more than youngsters who are dysfluent. They react to their dysfluencies and/or view their speech ability in ways that tend to be different from that of their normally fluent peers. Clinicians have long recognized this and have used this reactivity to augment their evaluation of children whose fluency is problematic. This has generally been done in an informal manner or has involved one or another measure of speech-associated reactivity that has not been standardized and does not provide norms that permit a comparison between children who do or do not stutter. The current forms of the BAB test procedures have been updated and its wording has been made more understandable and meaningful to school-age children. They highlight the affective, behavioral, and cognitive reactions that a child has about his or her speech ability. This information aids the clinician in differential diagnostic determinations and in shaping the strategy and tactics of therapy that are relevant to the reactive needs of a child who stutters (CWS). They do so by providing the clinician with an 'inside view' of how a child feels, reacts to, and thinks about his or her speech in a way that compliments the clinician's observation of a youngster's behavior. Recently, we have added to the BAB, the KiddyCAT, a companion test procedure that measures the communication attitude of preschool and kindergarten children. The research data that have resulted from investigations with the KiddyCAT indicate that, as a group, preschool children who stutter have a speech-related attitude that is significantly more negative than that of their nonstuttering peers. This finding has considerable clinical significance. A child's KiddyCAT score can serve as a meaningful aid in the early detection and treatment of a child whose fluency is problematic.