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From: Gretchen Hess, student in Michael Susca's CSUS stuttering course
Date: 21 Oct 2006
Time: 02:26:43 -0500
Remote Name: 216.102.106.156
Professor Snyder, Reading your article on stuttered signing was an extremely educational experience, not least of all because of the shift in my own attitude from the first paragraph (wherein I was thinking, "Stuttering in Sign Language?? Now THAT's a stretch--this guy's obviously trying to link apples and oranges and call them the same fruit) to the reading of your last few responses (when I was cheering your response to Tiffany, and reading it aloud to my family for its simultaneous clear thinking, drawing on the lessons of history, and sly humor. Leeches, indeed! Bravo). Practically every note I scrawled in the margins of my printed copy of your work was answered by the final paragraph, and the only questions I have left to pose are these: 1. Why, exactly, do you believe that the future of stuttering treatment will not be behavioral? Would you mind elaborating on that--and maybe hazarding a few predictions about the direction(s) that stuttering treatment might take in the future? 2. A key differentiating factor in separating PWS from the non-problematically disfluent seems to be--How does the PWS feel about it? Does s/he feel his/her stuttering is a problem, feel bad about it, feel anxious/ashamed, etc.? I didn't see much in your article that addressed the emotional aspect...so let me ask you now: do the stuttered signers you've met/interviewed/heard of exhibit this same (or similar) level of self-consciousness and distress that is so often characteristic of PWS? And if they generally DON'T--if they don't feel as traumatized and affected by their disfluent expressive communication as PWS who stutter in speech tend to feel--then does that fact alone not give you pause as you are attempting to demonstrate their common etiology? Or would you just assume folks who stutter in sign might not feel as self-conscious just because the phenomenon might be less noticeable to other signers than stuttered speech is to other speakers? 3. This feels like a dumb question even as I ask it, and I tremble lest leeches (or the like) be mentioned again, but I'll hazard it anyway, at the distinct risk of appearing a fool before the world: Is it not possible that part of "stuttered" signing might be due to the fact (if indeed it is a fact; I have no idea, as you can doubtless tell) that signing is just plain more DIFFICULT, motorically speaking, than oral-vocal speech? 4. On page 4, you make the comment that a sign language interpreter, noticing what she thought might be stuttered signing, was "unsure if the deviant signing was best described as stuttered or cluttered sign, as stuttered sign has not been clearly identified or operationally defined [...]"--does this mean that CLUTTERED sign HAS been clearly identified and/or operationally defined? I would love to learn more about that. 5. If stuttering may turn out to emerge as the effect of "neural processing errors" occurring "at a central level," how might one account for stutterers who are "cured" dramatically through speech therapy? (I have a more than merely academic interest in this last question, since my firstborn child seemed to be thus miraculously cured through therapy at the now-closed, but formerly fabulous, Humboldt State University clinic.) Thanks so much for your time and your insightful article and thoughtful replies to your readers. I look forward to hearing/seeing more of your work in the future, and especially to the possibility of seeing, at some later date, a documentary/video project on stuttered signing. Good luck with your grant project, Gretchen Hess