Desirable Outcomes From Stuttering THerapy

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Re: Monitoring

From: Steve Hood
Date: 10/3/03
Time: 7:34:36 AM
Remote Name: 199.33.133.50

Comments

Hi, Mary

Thanks for your comments and best wishes for completing your graduate program.

Monitoring is important. And at the beginning it is hard to remember, but over time, it can become easier and more automatic. Later, the PWS can learn to adjust the amount of monitoring that is needed, depending upon the degree of communicative pressure and stress being experienced. The PWS can learn to "gear up" and "gear down" to adjust the amount of stuttering modification that might be needed in a particular speaking situation.

You might want to try some of this yourself. Go out into the real world and do some voluntary stuttering-- where you try to monitor your speech and where you really make a conscious effort to vary the frequency, intensity, and duration of your stuttering moments---- Then, vary the types of disfluencies you are using (e.g., part-word repetitions, or sound prolongation, etc.) And then try to use some "speech targets" to modify and vary the severity. At first you will probably be pretty nervous and you might feel awkward doing it. You might feel that your stuttering is not realistic. But after doing this a number of times, I think you will find that it gets easier.

Welcome to the world of the clinician.

Steve Hood


Last changed: September 12, 2005