Using Audacity as Visual Feedback with a Nine Year Old Boy

[ Contents | Search | Post | Reply | Next | Previous | Up ]


Re: Audacity ?

From: Judy
Date: 05 Oct 2009
Time: 16:02:45 -0500
Remote Name: 74.104.112.9

Comments

Jodie, I love this question because it gets to the choices that clinicians make for each client. Every client may present with similar surface features of stuttering and every client may learn the basic "speech tools"; but, every client is so different in learning style, maturity, awareness, motivation, attitude, temperament, outside interests, attention, family values, additional disorders, and responsiveness, to name a few. Clients are as different from one another as any one person is from another. So how do we know if Audacity or DAF or a cognitive approach or a strict behavioral+token reward approach or a play/role modeling approach will work for any one client? I don't think we do know. We start somewhere and change our teaching methods depending upon the clients' responses. I've tried Audacity with two second grade boys. One needed lots of direction to make the connection between his voice and the waveform. He did get it, but, I felt the process was too cumbersome and not worth our time. The other second grader did not attend to it at all. After 10-15 minutes of silliness, I gave up. Teens found it interesting and helpful as a form of review when speech became temporarily more difficult. One teen was fascinated by how his speech sounded. He had mild blocks that he felt were lasting an eternity. He was pleasantly surprised to see and hear that they were not. I probably wouldn't try it with a child younger than second grade. In general, I think it will help me in the establishment phase of therapy and for review. The boy in this article was very interested in using the computer and very visually responsive, so the Audacity suited him well. He still struggles with periods of severe stuttering and we somtimes have to re-establish his easier speech with review using the Audacity. He's made wonderful progress but at the end of the day, I'm left wondering what his perceptual feedback skills are really like and how we can be sure he has the feedback he needs to make smooth-easy speech choices as needed. As an aside, we did use a school DAF for several weeks. However, the effect seemed to wear off after a few weeks and he complained the DAF gave him a headache. Obviously, we stopped that. Judy :)


Last changed: 10/05/09