MONTREAL – A rythm game played on a tablet may help children who stutter, according to Montreal researchers.
The same team previously showed that the intervention could help children wiht ADHD improve their attention and inhibitory control.
This time, Professor Simone Falk, from the Department of Psychology at the University of Montreal, and her colleagues wanted to know if rhythmic training could benefit children who stutter.
“advances in neuroscience have helped us better understand why people stutter, and one reason is that people who stutter have a difference in the timing management of speech,” she explained.
To perform well in the rhythm game, researchers say, children must demonstrate great control to tap the screen only when appropriate, in time with the game’s rhythm.
Players tap along with the music to build a virtual building, with its progress linked to their performance. Such as, tapping with perfect regularity for eight beats earns 100% accuracy, contributing to their overall score. When the score reaches a certain threshold, a new floor is added to the virtual building. The goal is to finish construction within a set time.
This small “proof of concept” study was conducted with 21 French-speaking Quebec children aged 9 to 12 who stuttered, without any other language disorder, as this is the age when stuttering is at risk of becoming permanent. Participants were randomly assigned to play the rhythm game or a non-rhythmic control game for three weeks.
Only participants who trained with the rhythm game, the authors report, showed improvements in stuttering.
