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From: John Tetnowski
Date: 06 Oct 2008
Time: 10:38:03 -0500
Remote Name: 74.171.126.240
Pam, I have been learning quite a bit about voluntary stuttering myself over the past few years. Most of this "learning" comes to me through some collaboration with one of my doctoral students who is finsihing her dissertation on voluntary stuttering. I can refer you to her off-line if you would like. Her defense is coming up soon and I just don't want to distract her at this point. However, one of the key things that I learned about voluntary stuttering is that it is used for several different reasons. Among the most common are "negative practice", and "desensitization". I will let you know that preliminary results are showing that voluntary stuttering does decrease "real stuttering" as well as "physical concomitants". As for your main question, "what do you do when voluntary stuttering turns into real stuttering?". I would say that the answer to the question depends on why voluntary stuttering is being done as part of the therapy. If it is used to simply desensitize, then nothing should be done. If it is being used as negative practice, then the client should have a technique to "pull-out" of the real stuttering. Great question. John Tetnowski