[ Contents | Search | Next | Previous | Up ]
From: Florence Myers
Date: 16 Oct 2011
Time: 15:43:23 -0500
Remote Name: 173.2.130.58
Hello Damon - Katrina deHirsch, a contemporary of Deso Weiss (who might be considered 'the father of cluttering' in the modern era), once wrote that the question of the relationship between cluttering and stuttering is one of the most important questions in our field. The major constructs associated with stuttering is that there is often physiological tension, effortfulness and fragmentation (especially fragmentation at the sound/syllable level) in speech. Clients often tell me that they know what they want to say but the difficulty is transitioning or blending successive sounds and syllables. I still consider myself a 'student' when it comes to cluttering, though I have spent the past nearly 30 years studying and thinking about it. I learn a lot from my clients. This is what people who clutter have shared with me: a) multiple thoughts come to mind and the PWC cannot or does not 'choose' to take the time to sequence the thoughts into language and speech; b) a tendency to be on overdrive most of the time (in fact, one client said that he's not in his comfort zone UNLESS he multitasked and at a fast rate at that) due to what may be an inherent disposition to want to do everything fast or in a disinhibited mode; c) some degree of difficulty in imposing self-monitoring and self-correction when talking. We also classically differentiate the disfluencies associated with cluttering by noticing that these disfluencies are not as fragmented or physiologically tense as in stuttering. The disfluencies in cluttering include interjections, incomplete utterance, and revisions. These disfluencies are also associated with typical speakers and has come to be known as (linguistic) maze behaviors. It is as if the PWC has difficulty encoding the ideas of a message in a completely focussed, well-organized, and efficient manner. I personally have advocated the notion that these disfluencies may reflect certain disruptions in the thought-to-language formulation process. Another distinctive feature about cluttering is that sounds and syllables are often dropped, rendering portions of the speech unintelligible. The listener thinks the PWC is talking fast or in a spurty manner perhaps in part because the listener has difficulty 'keeping up' with the processing of the message as it is not consistently easy to understand cluttered speech. Many individuals have elements of both stuttering and cluttering. One client told me that as he slows down to focus on his cluttering, stuttering-like behaviors emerge. You have raised a very important question for the profession, as well as of course for yourself. I would follow some of the leads provided by the others to seek someone who is knowledgeable about fluency disorders (both stuttering and cluttering). As a field, we know much more about stuttering than cluttering. Thank you for your contribution. Florence Myers