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From: Janis Ingham
Date: 10/14/02
Time: 6:44:20 PM
Remote Name: 68.6.68.82
Hi again, Maggie - No, we did not question our female subjects in regard to their menstrual cycle stages at the time they were scanned. While menstruation may have some effect on the variability of stuttering frequency or severity (i.e., more stuttering at some times in the cycle and less in another - although the data on that topic are not particularly convincing to me), it's clear that menstruation is not a fundamental factor in the cause of stuttering. Therefore, it's just another variable, like fatigue, or producing a long utterance, or talking to a person in authority, etc. that may temporarily influence stuttering. These are all variables that we must leave free to fluctuate across subjects in a given research study. And, the factors that we discover to be potent influences on stuttering (in our case, fluency generated by chorus reading) must be strong enough to overcome the variability that may be floating around because of these other variables.
Further, think of the practicalities: It's already difficult to find female stutterers to make up a group to study. Can you imagine what we'd have to go through if each subject had to be in the same stage of her menstrual cycle when she participated in the experiment! A daunting task of subject selection!! ;-)
Keep those questions coming.