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From: Lynne Shields
Date: 10/15/03
Time: 2:13:46 PM
Remote Name: 199.217.208.172
Hi Gunars,
I'm not sure that I can do justice to your entire post in the short amount of time I have at the moment. It seems that, if I may summarize your post, you are asking what criteria are to be used in evaluating treatment outcome. Briefly, I think it is quite important to look at a variety of indicators in determining whether intervention is successful for a particular person. You can split hairs about whether or not some of the methods for managing the disfluencies themselves should be considered to be disfluencies. If the client has a goal of increasing his/her ability to move forward in a smoother, more controlled way, then acquiring that control through use of easy onset, slides, pull-outs, etc. would constitute progress for them in my book. I also consider it important to address during treatment (and therefore include in our evaluation of progress) the client's feelings and thoughts about themselves and their speech, the degree of control that stuttering has over their life choices, the ways in which they communicate with significant others about their preferences regarding their speech and so forth.
Forgive me if I am missing your point. It's good to hear from you. I hope that your studies are going well for you.
Regards,
Lynne