The present study was aimed at studying the efficacy of speech rate manipulation on stuttering speech by
three young children. The Speed-Manipulation Program(SMP) in this study was based on manipulating various
length of utterances in reading task by visual cues. Specifically, the SMP focused on increasing self-monitering
and -controlling skills on self speech fluency. Three school aged children(age 8 to 10 years old) with
stuttering participated in this study and their parents agreed with this program. The degree of stuttering was
severe in the assessment of Paradise-Fluency Assessment-Ⅱ(P-FA-Ⅱ; Shim et al., 2010). These children were
able to read words voluntarily and also exhibited stuttering in reading task. A single-case design was
adopted. The pre- and post-assessment were carried out in the three areas of stuttering frequency, disfluency
patterns, reading rate in (reading task). In addition, communicative behaviors in the subtest of P-FA-Ⅱ in
both pre- and post-treatment for all participants. There were four procedures in the SMP; the initial stage of
stuttering behavior recognition, the second stage of controlling speech rate on visual cues, the third stage of
fluency maintenance in reading, and the last stage of speech rate manipulating therapy. In the level of
treatment, three children were directed to produce each syllables in words or phrases at randomly presented
slow and fast rates at 0.01sec to 10.00sec. The stuttering children showed usually more stuttering on the
fast rate task. The results of this study were First, the results showed that the SMP was effective on
reducing stuttering frequencies and simultaneously increasing normal fluency in reading tasks. Second, the
results showed that the SMP reduced the symptoms of stuttering. Blocking and phonemic repetitions were
noticeably decreased after treatment. Third, the results showed that the reading rate in post-therapy was so
faster compared to pre-therapy in all cases. Finally, there was so improvement in communicative behaviors in
three children after therapy. The results of the present study are suggestive of the usefulness of this therapy
focusing on manipulating speech rate in reading task in reducing severity of stuttering, enhancing normal
fluency and changing communicative behaviors positively. However, The results need more studies relating
with SMP for stuttering to confirm its efficacy in the clinical area of stuttering.