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From: Bruce Poburka
Date: 10/22/02
Time: 3:13:50 PM
Remote Name: 134.29.11.28
First, sorry that I did not notice your additional question until now...
I view the issue of abdominal breathing (vs. clavicular breathing) as relating to the anatomical site/part of the body the patient is focussing on. I don't think this automatically affects the amount of air being inhaled. In other words, the volume of air they take in is not necessarily tied to their site of focus. I feel the advantage of abdominal breathing is that people have better CONTROL over breathing for speech.
With regard to your observation that children do better when using more breath, that may be true if they are not using enough in the first place (i.e., a shallow breath). The point I was making in the article is that a very large breath is not good either. Instead, a moderate sized breath may be best...along with an abdominal focus.
I hope that helps you Sharon. Thank you so much for your interest in this article.