[ Contents | Search | Next | Previous | Up ]
From: Greg Snyder
Date: 10 Oct 2006
Time: 22:29:54 -0500
Remote Name: 207.68.248.51
Wow. Great Question. A student after my own heart--neat idea, but show me the data. So my response is really two-fold: First, we have to start thinking out of the box. If we extend of stuttering beyond the speech modality without extending our understanding or basic beliefs of the phenomenon, then we won’t get very far! Nothing will make sense. So in short, in dealing with “stuttering” relative to writing, singing, or even musical expression--we do not know what it looks like. And it may not look anything like speech at all, as stuttering may take on the characteristics of the modality being expressed. In short- -it may be time for us to look beyond the symptoms of “stuttering” and begin measuring a more direct manifestation of the disorder itself. (i.e., neural anatomy and processing) Thus, if stuttering does exist across expressive modalities, then there should be commonalities relative to neural processing. And to be honest, I’m not even sure we’ve got the technology to take a Tuba into an fMRI machine--so we may never live to see such a day. But to recap, my response would be to suggest that we: (1) Begin with square one. Start collecting data and looking at it with an open mind, while doing our best to drop our speech-based stuttering prejudice. (2) Begin looking beyond the most distal manifestations of the stuttering phenomenon (i.e., behaviors) and begin measuring something closer to the pathology itself (i.e., neural physiology).