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From: Peter Schneider
Date: 10/20/03
Time: 10:13:49 AM
Remote Name: 134.130.15.1
Dear Elizabeth Gormley,
many thanks for your questions! Itīs true, that for some people who stutter, talking on the telephone is a very stressful situation and has the potential for increasing stuttering behaviors. We chose the telephone exactly therefore - succesful therapy should lead to a decrease of stuttering frequency an an increase of speech naturalness even in stressful situations. True is, that we donīt get speech samples in more relaxed situations. (Besides - during a sample of 300 - 500 syllables people might get more relaxed even at the phone) We prefer spontanuous speech at the phone to a reading task or a conversation in the therapistīs room etc. because itīs a representative every day situation for everybody.
Yes, there was only one speech sample obtained pre-treatment and one post-treatment, and you are right, we canīt conclude, that these speech samples would depict the whole variability of stuttering. This is simply a question of funding - more money - more samples. We would have preferred more samples of different speech tasks. Best wishes Peter