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From: Katie McDonnell
Date: 11 Oct 2005
Time: 17:55:59 -0500
Remote Name: 140.160.81.147
I am aware that Dr. Hartman has past away, I am sorry to hear that. I am hoping that someone who is familiar with his strategies could answer some of my questions. I do agree with Hartman’s idea that, “constant conditioning of anticipation of failure, and the fruition of these anxieties creates the basis for habitual behaviors.” People anticipate stuttering and get accustomed to that failure of fluent speech. However, I do not agree with his statement, “’stutterers’ have a lower stress threshold than most people with regards to maintaining fluent speech.” Some people have different environments in which they stutter. Each may have a different level of stress, for example some people can sing in front of huge crowds but have a very difficult time maintaining fluent speech in a conversation with one other person. Stress is relative to each person and may not be a factor when stuttering. Hartman used a tactic where the speaker informed the listener of their speech disorder, he said, in general, listeners understood. Many may not understand because their time is ticking away because time is money to some people. My question is, what would Dr. Hartman suggest speakers do in a typical high stress situation where explaining the communication disorder of handing a card out would not be sufficient?