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From: Jamie E. Dolan-Wallace, Stevens Point, WI
Date: 22 Oct 2005
Time: 11:48:06 -0500
Remote Name: 209.103.213.254
I am not a PWS, I am a person who experiences normal disfluencies when communicating. Hartman's point of psycho-social stressors playing an important role in the lives of PWS struck a chord with me because I knowingly become more disfluent when the stakes are higher. My daily interactions with communication partners allow me to experience these psycho-social stressors when it is indicated to me via gestural or verbal communication that my communication partner is not interested in what I have to say. I become more disfluent when I can recognize that someone is not listening to me; my thoughts become scrambled and I break for concentration on the words that I had anticipated speaking. This is indeed a difficult situation to be in for anyone and I can only imagine what it is like to experience psycho-social stressors for PWS. I enjoyed Hartman's described tactics that can be used to alleviate communication breakdowns between PWS and unknown communication partners. My favorite, of course is the button idea: "I stutter - what I say is worth repeating." Of course it is!