Introduction to Stuttering

1
Introduction to Stuttering

• What is fluency?
• What is stuttering?
• How does it develop?

2
What is fluency?

• From the latin fluere, which means easy flow
• Starkweather (1986) suggests these basic elements
  of fluency
• Rate of utterance
• Continuity from one speech movement to another
• Rhythm or pattern of intonation of utterance
• Effort of the utterance, physical and mental

3
What is stuttering?

• Defined as
• Abnormally high frequency or duration of
  stoppages in the forward flow of speech affecting
  its continuity, rhythm, rate and effortfulness.

4
Core behaviors

• Repetitions
• PW
• WW
• Phrase
• Prolongations
• Vowel or consonant
• Blocks
• Between word or within-word
• Respiratory, laryngeal or articulatory

5
Secondary behaviors

• Reactions to the core behaviors
• Escape behaviors
• eye blinks, head nods, other physical
  concommitants
• Avoidance behaviors
• circumlocution, substitutional word avoidances
  situation avoidances

6
Feelings and attitudes

• Gradual increase in negative feelings about
  themselves and about speaking
• Some people who stutter will project their
  feelings on to other people (They think that Im
  stupid cause I cant talk!)

7
Disabled or handicapped?

• Disability
• A disability exists when an impairment limits a
  persons ability to perform certain tasks
• Handicap
• A handicap is a problem or disadvantage that a
  person with a disability encounters when
  interacting with the environment

8
General facts of stuttering

• Stutterers, or People Who Stutter?
• Prevalence (1) and incidence (5)
• Difference in each is due to spontaneous recovery
• Thematic Analysis of Late Recovery from
  Stuttering AJSLP May 2003
• Males stutter more than females at a ratio of
  about 31
• Occurs in all races and cultures

9
Features of stuttering

• PWS are able to predict the words on which they
  will be disfluent
• PWS consistently stutter on the same words or
  sounds
• PWS, when asked to read a passage 6 or 7 times,
  stutter less on each reading

10
Linguistic features of stuttered speech

• Adults stutter more frequently on
• Consonants
• Initial position of words
• In contextual speech, not isolated words
• On content words, not function words
• On longer, more complex words
• Near the beginning of sentences
• On stressed syllables

11
Stuttering is conditional to situations

• Fluency Inducing Stuttering inducing
• Speaking alone Speaking under time pressure
• Speaking to an animal Speaking in groups
• Speaking to someone younger Speaking to an
  authority figure
• Singing Speaking with listener interruptions
• Speaking in slow, prolonged Speaking on demand
• manner

12
A look at several PWS

• Ashley page 7
• Katherine page 9
• David page 10
• Sergio page 11