[ Contents | Next | Previous | Up ]
From: Lisa LaSalle, UW-Eau Claire
Date: 10/1/01
Time: 10:39:20 PM
Remote Name: 24.216.99.91
Ellen-Marie,
I suppose it takes a great paper like yours on an international online conference to make me realize that I need to meet a Wisconsin neighbor! I have long admired your work. My dissertation research was on the topic of disfluency clusters in preschool-aged children who stutter, a topic that you pioneered in the 1970s.
I think it's true that the culture of research in our Western society is geared towards confirming what we might expect to find. This means that some findings from the shocking to simply surprising can be harder to get published or "aired" at the time they are found, thus they are suppressed. In terms of shocking, I am reminded of all the press that the "Monster study" got this past summer, and I am also reminded of reading Masson's (1984) book "The Assault on the Truth: Freud's suppression of the seduction theory."
I agree with your call for individual responsibility for goal-setting as a way to help oneself or for helping one's own child who stutters. I have seen an increase over the past few years in parents contacting me over email for advice regarding their child who stutters. While I give very basic advice and encouragement and send them to this StutteringHomePage.com and to stutteringhelp.org for specifics (esp. for SLP referrals), I often wonder about the follow-through and the outcome of each child.
Regarding what that apparently uptight WSHA convention-goer in 1976 described as your "filthy" research ("Speech fluency fluctuations during the menstrual cycle," Silverman and Zimmer, 1975), I have a case example that you might be interested in. We met an outgoing, friendly 13-year-old girl last week in our university clinic. I'll call her "Jo." Jo stuttered at a moderate severity level on a fairly consistent basis, and she was interested in getting some help for her speech that would "do her some good." Jo's father reportedly stuttered, and still does to this day, but not consistently. Jo has an identical twin sister who was reported to also stutter, but much more mildly. When we followed-up, their mother said that the twin sister "couldn't get words out" but only periodically for a few days out of every month, like a menstrual cycle schedule, and the girls at age 13 had not yet begun their menses. The age of onset of stuttering was very unclear to their mother because of the highly variable nature of the stuttering for both girls. Seems like an interesting hormonal-genetic interaction. Based on your previous work in this area, what do you think?
Thanks again for such a thought-provoking article.