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From: Michael Susca
Date: 05 Oct 2007
Time: 23:32:26 -0500
Remote Name: 67.181.81.81
Hello Rick, At the risk of getting into "trouble" with my collegues, I'm not so sure a fast speech rate is a necessary requirement for stuttering. For sure, many PWSs improve speech fluency when speaking rate is reduced. But many already have an overall reduced speaking rate and they still stutter. Speaking rate also does not exist in isolation: emotions, propositionality of the message, prosodic factors, linguistic complexity and many other factors are linked to rate....and any one (or more) of those factors may affect the fluency/stuttering regardless of rate. For example, maybe you have known some PWSs who, when very angry, talk faster than typical but with fluency. Other PWSs, when angry, might talk faster but lock up into a stutter. I think a change in speaking rate may also be a by-product of therapy as well as those other factors mentioned. And regarding your query about research: I'll bet most research studies on speaking rate of PWS vs. non-PWS are based on average findings of groups.....and if you know anything about comparing group means, you'll often find overlap of members from one group into another group. Let me just end with a clinical observation: I recently had one client speak so fast she was unintelligible....I couldn't understand her regardless of her stuttering.....We initially focused on speaking rate reduction so she could be understood before we attended to the stuttering to enhance fluency. Hope my response wasn't too convoluted. Best to you.