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From: Tatyana Exum
Date: 16 Apr 2010
Time: 18:56:16 -0500
Remote Name: 113.76.238.230
I know that my co-authers would be able to add a lot more to my response. In my case, both stuttering and cluttering were officially diagnosed at the same time when I was 51. I was familiar with stuttering since childhood, but it never occured to me that my own speech difficulties could be diagnosed as such. Piano lessons, singing were the indirect remedies which compensated for the defficienies where the rate, breathing patterns, and blocks were concerned; however, there was another difficulty in the communication - my own mother was experiencing frequent periods of misunderstanding me. For me, my speech spurts were helping to mask "road blocks" and to maintain the thought traffic. From her point of view, my mouth was not catching up with my brain. So, while stuttering was addressed through the above activities she chose for me, cluttering (which we were unable to identify)was attempted to be dealt with through the "Slow down!", "Repeat it again!" statements. Frustration, caused by the inability to match the thought processing speed with the high quality speech production, led to acute reduction of communication at times. Hearing my own recorded speech helped me to finally realize that it was not my listeners' problem, but mine. Intended self-monitoring in combination with recording and phonetic exercises,jotting my own thoughts on paper before I speak helped to reduce run-ons and interruptions and improved communication overall.