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From: Anelise Bohnen
Date: 15 Oct 2011
Time: 13:26:42 -0500
Remote Name: 189.63.133.13
Hi Julie Yes, I have. Not very often, though, and I did not analyze this type of stuttering. There is not much literature on this matter. Some say it might be related to neurological lesions, others say it happens mainly in preschoolers with no other apparent difficulties. I evaluated one adult and treated a few children. They responded well to the treatment. Because speech is a connected string of sounds, with pauses occurring BETWEEN words and not WITHIN them, hence, stuttering breaks the integrity of the word. One thing that has helped my students to understand these processes is to "see" how we talk. When we write, we necessarily have to leave space between words. This is how we learned to read and write. It makes this task a lot easier on our eyes. However, we learned to talk with our ears listening to an ever changing string of sounds, just like this: "whenwetalkwedonotleavespacesbetweenwords / unlessweneedtotakeabreath". Neuroscientists say that the brain of people who stutter cannot distinguish where the end of one word and the beginning of the next is supposed to be and, not being able to do so, breaks the word on inadequate places. The most important thing is never neglect treatment to all children who stutter, as soon as the ruptures begin. This will allow these children to an almost 100% of chances of overcoming stuttering, according to the literature. My experience helps me agree with that. Thank you for you question. Anelise