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From: Joseph Dewey
Date: 12 Oct 2005
Time: 12:09:47 -0500
Remote Name: 166.70.154.2
Hi Lauren. This is a really interesting question. I think that the reason for cluttering is extreme underdevelopment in some very select areas that are somewhat related to musicality, rhythm, speech, and organization. I'm not sure what those areas are specifically, but I think that research will eventually uncover them. Also, I don't know what caused the underdevelopment. I don't know if it's genetic, learned, or an event. I'm more interested in isolating the underdevelopment and going through those development stages that somehow I missed and that resulted in my disrupted speech. I think you're absolutely right that deep down I knew I had some kind of a deficit. The things I remember from "before" were being at parties or in groups, and wanting to say something, but thinking that I didn't know what I wanted to say. I also developed a secondary behavior of pausing in conversation for 20-60 seconds, to subconsciously disguise my cluttering. I think there was some hyperdevelopment in areas related to the underdevelopment, too. Really, I didn't have the words to describe what I was going through. I felt different than everyone else, but then I had heard that everyone else feels different than everyone else, so it wasn't until I was diagnosed that things started to click and to make sense about really awkward conversational experiences that I had been through. Thanks for the question. Joseph