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From: Chris Grenoble
Date: 07 Oct 2006
Time: 14:13:27 -0500
Remote Name: 69.60.183.161
Dear Greg, Thanks for the extensive review of the research. It's really appreciated. You wrote, "The charicteristics of stuttered speech may not clearly translate into the charicteristics of stuttered sign." Of course, when reading your list of potential charicteristics of stuttered sign, the similarities between stuttered sign and stuttered speach are quite compelling. Please help me get some of the terminology correct. Does the phrase "behavioral incoordination with in the speech motor mechanism" refer to the activation of neurons innervating the muscles of the vocal tract, the muscles contracting, the articulators moving and the production of the acoustic wave? When you refer to language do you mean the stored concepts, the concept and word retrieval, and the phonemic and grammar assembly? Then the two would be joined by Lindblom's rules and the motor plan. If that is somewhere in the ballpark then I have three questions. Would you push the motor plan into the language or behavioral motor speech arena? Why do you think you were able to learn unstuttered sign but not unstuttered speech? Do you know the incidence of stuttered sign as opposed to stuttered speech? I also wonder what the genetic and brain scan "signatures" of stuttering will look like and if there will be more than one. I wonder about the differences between stuttered speech and apraxia, stuttered handwriting and dysgraphia. Thank you for your thoughts. Chris Grenoble