Most children who stutter get better on their own, and many more are helped by speech therapists. But for some, the problem can persist and cause social and emotional trouble. In a new study published in the British Medical Journal, researchers tested a particular method on preschool-age children in New Zealand.

The Lidcombe program was developed in Australia. Parents carry out the program, giving feedback to children on their speech and keeping track of how well their children are speaking. They may praise a child for fluent speech or comment when the child gets stuck on a word.

In this study, children ages 3 to 6 were randomly assigned to the Lidcombe program or to be controls. The study was small–only 54 children joined, of whom 47 finished the study–but the researchers found significant differences between them in the degree of improvement. Nine months after the study started, children who were in the Lidcombe group stuttered only 1.5 percent of their syllables, compared with 3.9 percent of syllables for the children who didn't get treatment.

The researchers originally wanted the study to last for 12 months, so they'd be able to see more of a difference between children who got the treatment and children who didn't, but parents of children in the control group didn't want to wait that long before their children got treatment for their stuttering.

To find out more: Read information about the Lidcombe program, including a manual, from the Australian Stuttering Research Center.