School-age Stuttering Therapy: A burden, a challenge, or an opportunity?

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Re: Carry-Over

From: Scott
Date: 10 Oct 2012
Time: 10:43:48 -0500
Remote Name: 108.17.124.241

Comments

hi Ryan - thanks for your post. This is an incredibly important topic. If one does not achieve generalization of therapy gains, then one really hasn't accomplished much of value in the end. Nina and I have written about generalization in other formats quite a bit, including in a 2002 paper in Seminars in Speech and Language. (It might have been 2003, now that I think about it.) There is much to say on the topic (that's why we wrote a book) -- for starters, though, I'd like to encourage you to think about generalization not only of speech goals (which is important, of course), but also for all of the various topics and strategies addressed in therapy. SO, as you're working on improving communication attitudes and desensitizing to stuttering, then this is something that needs to generalize to other situations; if you're working on responses to bullying, then this needs to generalize to other situations; etc. So, how do you do it? Well, one of the things we write about in our book is how to bring aspects of the clinical world out into the real world (e.g., having you go with the child on "field trips" during practice sessions) and bring aspects of the real world into the clinical world (e.g., talking about what the child is doing, rather than using word lists or set phrase lists). The more real you can make therapy, and the more therapeutic you can make the real world, the easier it will be for generalization to occur. There are also specific strategies associated with working on hierarchies that can make all of this possible. Ultimately, the goal is for the child to BE ABLE to use all of his strategies (speech strategies and acceptance-based strategies) in all situations...not that he'll always actually DO that, but that he'll have the ABILITY to do that... Make sense? Thanks again for the question... good luck in your work! Scott


Last changed: 10/22/12