ESTABLISHMENT OF LIGHT ARTICULATORY CONTACTS
Rationale: Children and adolescents who stutter frequently produce consonants
with hard articulatory contacts. Hard contacts are the source of a great deal
of articulatory tension and may result in the impedance of airflow in the oral
cavity. Teaching the client to produce soft, loose articulatory movements is
helpful in reducing the articulatory tension. Light contacts are also helpful
in providing the child with a tool to reduce tension during the stuttering
moment.
Activities/Techniques:
- Teach the client the concept of soft, loose sounds. Emphasizing
the "feeling" of loose articulatory movements and smooth,
continuous airflow. How relaxed does the tongue feel? "Soft
sounds" can be taught at the phoneme level and incorporated into
activities that follow a hierarchy of increased length and
linguistic complexity up through conversation.
- Use of a delayed auditory feedback unit (DAF) may be used with
older children to facilitate light articulatory contacts through
abnormally slowed rate at the single word through reading levels.
- Voluntary stretches, accomplished by lengthening or prolonging the
first syllable of a word, involves soft, slow articulation of the
consonant and prolonged phonation of the vowel. These stretches
may be incorporated in single words through conversational tasks.
- Contrast drills are a helpful activity to increase the client's
awareness of hard vs. articulatory contacts. Be sure to emphasize
kinesthetic awareness. Have the child read from a list of words
alternating hard and soft productions of each word. Encourage the
client to feel the difference while the clinician explains why
they are different.
- The clinician may demonstrate several samples of the clients'
stuttering behaviors and then demonstrate how he/she can stutter
more easily. The clinician may slow down a repetition, stretch
out of a block, or do an easy repetition to ease out of laryngeal
block.
- The following excerpt is from Dell, "Treating The School-Age
Stutterer," and describes a method of teaching light, loose
articulatory contacts:
When you are stuttering hard on it, you will feel
your tongue jammed up against the alveolar ridge.
You will also feel air pressure building up behind
your tongue. The air wants to escape but you are
forcing it back with your tongue. Now gradually
loosen the pressure on your tongue by reducing the
force of the air pressure pushing up against it.
Then gradually begin to relax the tension you have
purposely placed on your tongue. When you remove
some of this lingual pressure, you will probably
hear a little burst of air escaping between the
tongue and the alveolar ridge. You then need to
change these bursts into a small, steady stream of
air, it is easy to add the voicing necessary and
once again slide into the work but beware of
prolonging the vowel. It should be tttable' not
taable'.
- Cancellations may be employed to further facilitate awareness of
light articulatory. Immediately after the stuttering moment, the
child should repeat the work with a light articulatory contact.
"This technique allows the child to reattempt a work in which the
coarticulatory gestures have not been smoothly produced." (Wall
and Myers).
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