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From: Gunars
Date: 10/8/03
Time: 5:16:24 AM
Remote Name: 12.211.116.92
Greetings,
First let me congratulate you on undertaking a task which might now be rewarding, but is, indeed, necessary to do.
In my personal journey with my companion stuttering :-) I have experienced that normal prosody and flowingness of speech is a lagging indicator. The precursor is a real change in attitude. What is your opinion on this topic?
Re-reading Wendell Johnson's work I came to a conclusion that a) pullout and b) even pre-pullout can be considered just as much a stuttering event as an innocent re-repetition. My question to you is: Did you count pullouts, pre-pullouts, easy onsets, and elongation of vowels when you arrived at stuttering frequency levels? Myself I would rather have a natural re-repetition (without any conscious effort on my part) than a pullout which does take some effort on my part.
In other words, I am proposing a model based on tolerance of repetitions as long as the speaker has natural prosody and is not engaged in avoidances, forcing, struggling, secondary symptoms of stuttering, etc.
Since I am not familiar with the attitude measuring instruments, I would ask again in the splirit of Wendell Johnson, his philosophy of General Semantics (which my favorite psychological theory Rational Emotive Behavior Theory also evokes) if there were any realistic and pragmatic questions that were rated on the Likert scales such as:
1) Can you accept yourself unconditionally as a stutter or person who (occasionally) stutters if there are no practical downsides to your stuttering?
2) What is your tolerance of the discomfort for YOU stuttering causes?
3) What is your tolerance of the discomfort for OTHERS stuttering causes?
4) Let us talk a bit of existential philosophy: Do you consider a person who stutters equally worthy as a person who does not stutter?
5) How do you truly feel about conditional self-esteem? Is a fluent person better than you are?
6) Can you truly accept yourself unconditionally whether you stutter or not?
7) Do you truly understand that rating yourself or other people is, (anyway according to existentialistic philosophers, General Semanticists, and Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy practitioners) total nonsense? It really does not matter whether an individual is labelled by others a "stutterer" or a Person Who Stutters, a person does so many things, has so many potentials, that comparison against others or even self-comparison over time is not a productive use of one's time.
The reason I have asked if these type of questions are included in the "attitude" part of the questionnaires is that so many people, me included in the past (I have given it up now :-)), time to time base our self-worth or self-esteem on how well we talk. This is the most pernicious hurdle to becoming an actualizing human being. And the question? The question is do the questionnaires that you use address the question of unconditional self acceptance?
Some other housekeeping questions:
a) Do you have a short attitude questionnaire that you give the adults over the phone?
b) Do you have the resources to do a long range follow up, since, in my humble opinion, IF AND ONLY IF, the proper attitude is established the normal prosody, even if peppered by occasional repetitions, should follow?
Gunars
p.s. During my spring break in 2004 I will be going to Hamburg to visit my wife's relatives. I would dearly love to meet any and all of you at that time, if possible. I know your English is better than my German (but I am willing to hobble along even in German). If you would like to meet with me, you can reach me at neiders@halcyon.com