Disfluency is an interruption in the natural flow of speech. Disfluencies can either be normal, such as those displayed by children in the language learning stage, or abnormal, as in stuttering. Aside from the norm, another factor that makes this topic difficult to understand is the cause of stuttering. It can be neurogenic, meaning that stuttering was the result of a stroke, brain injury, or degenerative disease occurring later in life. It can also be psychogenic, in which its cause is related to a mental illness, or developmental, meaning that the individual had a genetic predisposition to stutter. Due to its complex etiology, determining the proper treatment for stuttering is often complicated. Many researchers and speech-language pathologists have come up with different techniques; however, which is the most reliable?
Prior to beginning any form of stuttering treatment, the clinician must first work to reduce the client’s negative attitude, if present, towards their stuttering. Although many would not view this as effective treatment, negative emotions and environmental stressors can actually worsen disfluencies, causing the individual to anticipate and fear speaking. After reducing negative emotions, the client will be more apt to participate in therapy and increase the chances of effective and positive outcomes. One form of therapy influenced by positive emotions is Charles Van Riper’s stuttering modification techniques.
Stuttering modification techniques, including cancellations, pullouts, and preparatory sets, were developed “to modify speech timing”, as well as the negative reactions towards stuttering (Owens, Metz, Farinella, 2011). Cancellations involve a 3-4 second pause, followed by the correction ...
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... increase fluency. Regardless, no therapy techniques are 100% effective; however, with time, motivation, a positive outlook, willingness to participate from both the client and family, as well as support from the family, any form of therapy has potential to create positive outcomes.
Works Cited
Dahm, B. (2012, January 2). Why don't people stutter when they sing?. Retrieved December 7, 2013, from CTI: Stuttering Online Therapy Web Site: http://stutteringonlinetherapy.com /2012/01/why-don%E2%80%99t-people-stutter-when-they-sing/
Guitar, B. (2006). Stuttering: An integrated approach to its nature and treatment. (3rd ed., pp. 324). Baltimore, MD: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
Owens, R.E. Metz, D.E., & Farinella, K.A. (2011). Introduction to communication disorders: A lifespan evidence-based perspective. p 250-255. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Inc.
Shonkoff JP (2003). Language delay: Late talking to communication disorder. In CD Rudolph, AM Rudolph, eds.,Rudolph's Pediatrics, 21st ed., pp. 441–444. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Stress can cause anyone to feel anxiety. Whether the anxiety is minimal or severe depends on each individual person. Under stress, it is common and acceptable for people’s voice to falter. Speakers under stress might tense the muscles used to produce speech, increasing their vocal pitch. That generally wouldn’t happen in a stress-less situation. Typically when under stress people talk more rapid. This occasionally causes them to stumble over words or get stuck on a syllable. More often than not, they tend to repeat words or phrases as they struggle to talk, present, etc. under the stress. Another common ‘symptom’ under stress is adding interjections, such as “like”, “uhm” and “uh” during speech. These are considered normal and acceptable dysfluencies. The simple task of saying colors in front of an audience was used as a study. They found that under stress, pressure, anxiety and whatever else is felt during public speaking, non-stutterers went from zero percent dysfluencies to four percent. On the other hand, those who normally stuttered went from one percent to nine percent dysfluencies. (Perkins) One interesting fact, is that stutterers are able to talk normally to babies, children, and animals. These audiences are nonthreatening and the speaker is at ease. It is also common for stutterers to talk aloud to themselves without or with very little
Stuttering affects the fluency of speech. Stuttering is characterized by disruptions in speech sound productions, also known as a disfluency. Mostly, stuttering has a significant effect on some daily activities. Though some people have disfluency deficits only in certain situations. Some people limit their participations in different everyday activities because they are often embarrassed or sad about their situation and are concerned about how other's will react to stuttering. In stuttered speech repetitions of words or also of parts of words are included. Prolongations of speech sounds may also occur. It is a characteristic of some people who
This silent fear reflects that I grew up with a history of speech impediments. Spending countless hours as a child driving from one speech therapist to another, repeating a range of exercise from “fee-fi-fo-fum” to watching my tongue placement in a mirror, I was your
Blood, Blood, Maloney, Meyer, & Qualls (2007) examined the anxiety levels in adolescents who stutter to increase their understanding of the role of anxiety in stuttering across the lifespan. The participants were 36 students, chosen from public schools in Pennsylvania, who were in the 7th through 12th grade. However, only participants who have had treatment for their stuttering were included in the study. The control groups were chosen from public schools as well, and were chosen to match the stuttering participants in grade, gender, ethnicity and approximate age. To assess the stuttering severity of the participants, the Stuttering Severity Insturment-3 (SSI-3) was used. The outcomes classified the participants’ stuttering as either mild, moderate, severe, or very severe (profound). In measuring anxiety levels the researchers used the Revised Children’s Manifest Anxiety Scale (RCMAS)....
Aphasia is an acquired communication disorder that disrupts communication and it can deteriorate a person’s coping potential and quality of life (Parr, 2001) which involve damage to the parts of brain that contain language (ASHA, 2013). Statistics from United States indicated around 25-40% of stroke survivors developed aphasia (National Association of Aphasia, NAA, 2013). Aphasia will affect both the ability to produce or comprehend spoken language and written language while intelligence is left intact (NAA, 2013). In US, it is found that the most common cause of aphasia is stroke (85%) and others including Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), brain tumor or other degenerative diseases (NAA, 2013).
Stuttering is a neurological disorder of communication, from which the normal flow of speech is disrupted by repetitions (neu-neu-neuro), prolongations (biiiii-ol-ooogy), or abnormal stoppages (no sound) of sounds and syllables. Rapid eye blinking, tremors of the lips and/or jaw, or other struggle behaviors of the face or upper body may accompany speech disruptions ((3)). Why does stuttering worsen in situations that involve speaking before a group of people or talking on the phone, whereas fluency of speech improves in situations such as whispering, acting, talking to pets, speaking alone, or singing ((1))? In ancient times, physicians believed that the stutterer's tongue was either too long or too short, too wet or too dry. Therefore, practitioners from the mid-1800s tried surgical remedies such as drilling holes into the skull or cutting pieces of the tongue out to eliminate stuttering (1).
During my demonstration speech, I was affected by my speech anxiety. Some of the viewable symptoms were the shaking of my hands and also the stuttering of speech. I was able to control myself and relax after I started getting into my information. I did use some of the suggested relaxation techniques to relieve my anxiety. Before I got up to speak I thought confident of myself to help give me courage and confidence.
Autism is a problem that people have with communicating. It can affect many contrasting types of people in divergent ways and there is not yet a complete cure for it. People need to know about this disability and what people can do with people who have it.
To function effectively in today’s society people must communicate with one another. Yet for some individuals communication experiences are so unrewarding that they either consciously or unconsciously avoid situations where communication is required. (McCroskey & Richmond, 1979) The term ‘communication apprehension’ was coined by James McCroskey (1976a) and is defined as “an individual’s level of fear or anxiety associated with either real or anticipated communication with another person or persons” (McCroskey, 1984). In the last two decades communication apprehension and related constructs, such as reticence and unwillingness to communicate, have received extensive research and theoretical attention by scholars in communication and psychology. In 1984, Payne and Richmond listed over 1000 entries in a bibliography of publications and papers in this area (Payne & Richmond, 1984). Overwhelmingly the underlying theme of the articles has been the negative effects that these constructs can have on academic and social success. It has been forwarded that two out of ten people suffer some form of communication apprehension (CA). The focus of this paper is on communication apprehension as a construct and on how it affects the behavior and lifestyle of an individual.
...hese children were unfairly target for this research because they were institutionalized I believe that Johnson studied was to biased because he was so determine to find a cure that will help him in the long run instead of reviewing the facts. In reality, stuttering can caused by different things such as environmental, biological factor, or genetic. In Johnson, case he already had hypothesis in mind and he was too determine to prove his hypothesis instead of reviewing the facts.
There comes a time in our life when we know what we want to say, but it does not come out the way we thought it would. Such as being worried about reading out loud in class, going up to an employee in a fast food restaurant to order a simple meal, or making a presentation in class can be terrifying for most individuals with an articulation disorder. An articulation disorder consist of having difficulties producing sounds, substituting sounds, leaving out letters in a word, or adding or changing letters in a word. In most cases when individuals have trouble articulating words he/she might have problems with the main articulators which include: the jaw, lips, teeth, tongue, velum, alveolar ridge, and hard/soft palate. These articulators play
For example one question was, “does it prevent me from doing ordinary things?” It’s a yes and no answer because I still walk, and run it does not prevent me from doing things physical things, but when it comes to talking it’s a little bit more difficult and I struggle more. Stuttering makes things more challenging which is alright but you have to work more on how you talk. “Why can’t you speak correctly?” That is another question that anyone can ask and the truth is that it is a disorder in our speech sound of word, we repeat some of the words. “How does it feel to stutter?” To me as a stutter person it affects emotionally because sometimes I rather be quite and prevent talking and embarrassing myself. It affects us because of the way we communicate, it is not easy but we try to make it fluently as possible. (Question
In this world, humans and animals alike have come to communicate by using various mechanisms. Humans have advanced themselves beyond other organisms by using language, or a set of codes and symbols, in order to express themselves to others. Language has brought about a means to create new thoughts, to explore, and to analyze our everyday surroundings. It has also enabled us to retain past memories and to look deep into the advances for the future. However, for some individuals, this tool for communication has been plagued by a language and speech disorders, such as aphasia. Aphasia is the loss of the ability to speak or understand speech or written language. It is often detected at an early age, and contributes to the general class of speech and language disorders affecting "5% of school aged children" (1) . Aphasia is classified into three categories. The main two are receptive or sensory aphasia and expressive or motor aphasia. Receptive aphasia affects the input side and "the ability to understand spoken or written language may be partially or totally lost" (1) . Those with expressive aphasia "can speak but not find certain words or names, or may be totally unable to communicate verbally or by writing" (1) . For a majority of affected individuals, there is a combination of the two. The third type is conduction aphasia. This "involves disruption of transmission between the sensory and motor ends of the circuit" (1) . Here, individuals are able to produce speech despite the lack of connections to the input side. It seems that the ability to speak has a lot to do with your surroundings and how much emphasis was placed on developing this skill during the first few years after birth. Afterall, it's known that the first few years are critical because this is the time when the brain is "plastic" and is rapidly changing and being molded. By the time that adolescence is reached, the brain has become "less plastic". In this paper, I would like to explore theories proposed to try to understand the origins of this impairment.
Communication is very crucial in life, especially in education. Whether it be delivering a message or receiving information, without the ability to communicate learning can be extremely difficult. Students with speech and language disorders may have “trouble producing speech sounds, using spoken language to communicate, or understanding what other people say” (Turkington, p10, 2003) Each of these problems can create major setbacks in the classroom. Articulation, expression and reception are all essential components for communication. If a student has an issue with articulation, they most likely then have difficulty speaking clearly and at a normal rate (Turkington, 2003). When they produce words, they may omit, substitute, or even distort sounds, hindering their ability to talk. Students who lack in ways of expression have problems explaining what they are thinking and feeling because they do not understand certain parts of language. As with all types of learning disabilities, the severity can range. Two extreme cases of expression disorders are dysphasia and aphasia, in which there is partial to no communication at all (Greene, 435, 2002). Individuals can also have a receptive disorder, in which they do not fully comprehend and understand information that is being given to them. They can experience problems making sense of things. “Children may hear or see a word but not be able to understand its meaning” (National Institutes of Health, 1993, p1). Whether children have difficulty articulating speech, expressing words, receiving information, or a combination of the three, there is no doubt that the tasks given to them in school cause frustration. These children experience anxiety when...