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From: Erika Shira
Date: 07 Oct 2008
Time: 17:09:09 -0500
Remote Name: 216.195.210.138
In my (purely anecdotal...) experience, there's been improvement every time I've used this sort of technique. Among folks who have the cognitive ability to have good insight, everyone I've worked with has reported feeling more comfortable speaking. Folks who aren't able to report this sort of thing seem to me and to their caregivers to be more comfortable speaking and are observed to make longer utterances and to initiate more speaking in unfamiliar situations. In the end, I think that's what fluency is all about. If someone can deliver a message and get through it and present themselves with confidence and presence, then that's a lot more important than, say, counting and timing the actual hesitations and repetitions of sound. (Any of you SLP folks are of course free to disagree!)