"This is a must have manual for any clinician seeing children who stutter. It is the first assessment tool that combines information on speech-associated negative emotion, voluntary behaviors designed to avoid, escape or hide stuttering and mal-attitude towards speech. It helps clinicians distinguish PWS from PWNS by means other than dysfluency counts..."
ABOUT THE TEST BATTERY
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 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 most successful treatment strategies and tactics. This battery serves to shape therapy and it provides 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. There tends to be considerable disagreement among listeners, even fluency specialists, as to what constitutes stuttering. As a result, the counts of speech disruption displayed by a child vary markedly, are often unreliable, and thus of questionable validity.
Whether one is or is not thought to stutter is not fully dependent on the type or amount of dysfluency. 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 they are obviously necessary for a child to be identified as one who stutters, 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 measures 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 will aid 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 that compliment the clinician's outside observations.
Recently, we have added to our assessment battery 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 is clinically significant in terms of early diagnosis and treatment.
Comments by a range of fluency specialists point to the utility of the BAB self-report measures in the planning and conduct of therapy that is tailored to deal with an individual child's negative reactions to his or her speech, reactions that can interfere with and hamper the therapy procedures that are designed to enhance and maintain fluent speech production. We are confident that the Behavior Assessment Battery will assist the clinician, not only in the determination as to whether or not a child being evaluated feels, behaves, and thinks like a CWS, but will, in addition, lay out a therapeutic road map that will serve the CWS well.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Gene J. Brutten, Ph.D., who received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, is clinically certified in speech pathology and audiology by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. He is a fellow of the association and has been awarded its certificate of recognition and certificate of appreciation. Professor Brutten is a founding member of the International Fluency Association and served as the editor-in-chief of its
Journal of Fluency Disorders from 1989 to 2000. In 1971 and again in 1978, he received a Fulbright-Hays award to the Department of Foniatrie of the University of Utrecht Academic Hospital where he conducted clinically-based research. He co-authored the "Modification of Stuttering," has published more than 70 peer-reviewed journal articles, 20 book chapters, and has given over 200 professional presentations in three continents on differential assessment and behavior therapy. Dr. Brutten is an emeritus professor in the Southern Illinois University Department of Communication Disorders and Sciences, where he served as department chair and in its Department of Psychology. In 2002, Dr. Brutten received the Honors of the American Speech-Language and Hearing Association.
Martine Vanryckeghem, Ph.D. received her Master's Degree (1991) and Ph.D. (1994) from Southern Illinois University after having worked for 12 years as a speech therapist at a clinical center in Belgium. Dr. Vanryckeghem, who is a professor at the University of Central Florida, is clinically certified as a speech-language pathologist and is a member of ASHA's Inaugural Cadre of Board Recognized Fluency Specialists and Mentors. She has published widely in peer-reviewed journals and has given workshops, internationally, with respect to the evaluation of children and adults whose fluency is problematic. From 1990 until 2000, she was the managing editor of the
Journal of Fluency Disorders and is currently an editorial consultant to professional journals. Dr. Vanryckeghem is on the Scientific Board of the Organization for the Integration of Handicapped People and serves internationally as a consultant to the faculty and staff of various hospital and university-based clinical programs.
