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The International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics (IALP) assessed the therapy status of fluency disorders, service opportunities, and education of logopedists (speech-language pathologists) with a mail survey in Eastern Europe. Information was collected on the following aspects: incidence, prevalence, availability of information, non-therapeutic support for persons who stutter (PWS), providers of diagnostics and therapy, cooperating professionals, therapy approaches, forms, goals, financing, early detection and prevention, training of professionals, specialization in stuttering therapy, needs for improving the situation of PWS, and problems which hinder better care. Stuttering therapy for children is available in many countries and is frequently provided by the educational system. Therapy for adults is provided best by the health services but is not satisfactorily available everywhere. Modern therapeutic approaches coexist with obsolete ones. Lack of resources, awareness, entitlement, and assessment of therapy effectiveness are pervasive problems. Educational objectives: Readers will be able to describe and evaluate: (1) the therapy status of fluency disorders and service opportunities in various East-European countries; (2) the training of logopedists (speech-language pathologists); (3) specialization in stuttering therapy; and (4) the organizational services for PWS within the health and human service systems.

Genetic influence for adult slow and/or inaccurate reading ability was studied from self-reported answers, using a dichotomous question on having difficulties in reading the Danish subtitles on foreign TV programs. The data from 33,424 twins were population based and were used for biometric analysis in order to estimate the heritability of reading difficulties. The rate of reading difficulties were 6-9 percent, higher for males than females. Tetrachoric correlations were estimated under univariate saturated models, specified with appropriate constraints. Hierarchical χ² tests showed that the fit of these models was not significantly worse than that of the more general models without the constraints. The probandwise concordance rates and tetrachoric correlations were substantially and significantly higher for monozygotic compared to dizygotic pairs, suggesting genetic influence. Univariate genetic analysis showed that additive genetic (A) and unique (unshared) environmental (E) factors best explained the observed concordance patterns for males. For females, and possibly also for males, a small proportion of non-additive genetic factors (D) were included. But the AE-model had the same goodness-of-fit as the ADE-model, so therefore we selected the simplest model, the AE-model. The heritability is 0.63 with the 95 % confidence interval [0.55; 0.6% adjusted for the effects of age and gender. Both age and gender have significant influence. With the limitations related to adult self-reports this study demonstrates substantial genetic, almost only additive, influence on reading difficulties. The environmental factors affecting reading difficulties were unique and unshared (E). Unshared environmental factors are those factors that are specific to an individual, thus contributing to differences between family members. Unshared environmental factors are environmental factors related to perinatal factors, illness, traumas, foster home, individual peers etc. With a simple question about difficulty in reading subtitles we got valid information about the heritability of reading disorders, well in accordance with other studies involving very time consuming assessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Genetic influence for stuttering was studied based on adult self-reporting. Using nation-wide questionnaire answers from 33,317 Danish twins, a univariate biometric analysis based on the liability threshold model was performed in order to estimate the heritability of stuttering. The self-reported incidences for stuttering were from less than 4% for females to near 9% for males. Both probandwise concordance rate and tetrachoric correlation were substantially higher for monozygotic compared to dizygotic pairs, indicating substantial genetic influence on individual liability. Univariate biometric analyses showed that additive genetic and unique environmental factors best explained the observed concordance patterns. Heritability estimates for males/females were 0.84/0.81. Moderate unique environmental effects were also found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]