Imaginal pacing in the treatment of stuttering

This report describes a procedure which is effective for decreasing the rate of stuttered speech and for increasing the rate of fluent speech. Two boys, who stuttered severely, first paced their speech to the beat of a metronome. Over a number of sessions the metronome beat was removed and other stimuli were added, culminating in the institution of a private or imaginal beat by which speech could be paced. The boys also progressed from saying one syllable per beat to saying one word per beat. Stuttering behavior for both boys rapidly decreased in both rate and intensity as fluent speech increased.