In our language and culture class, we had several detailed discussions regarding speech disabilities and how they affect one's performance of language and others' views on that person's comprehension of, or competence in, language. We also learned that speech impediments afflicted a larger number of students in class than we would have imagined. This sparked our group's interest, and for our research project we have decided to focus on the speech impediment stuttering. We wanted to focus on the research methods that were used in speech therapy which could help children overcome this hardship. We hypothesized that there would be no single philosophy most effective for overcoming stuttering.
It is important that we understand more about this subject because it does affect a great deal of people. According to the Stuttering Foundation's official website, there are "over three million Americans stutter." Approximately one percent of the world's population stutters and up to ten percent have other speech impediments.
By the late 1800s, many studies and other documents were recorded about stuttering. Unfortunately, a great deal of these were based on "armchair speculation and casual observation"(Williams). The State University of Iowa a instituted speech disorder program, the first of its kind, was headed by Lee Edward Travis. He published his book Speech Pathology in 1931, which may have something to do with why a majority of the research found on this topic was written in the 1930s and 40s, and why it was slightly outdated. Prior to these studies, tickling a baby was one of the many superstitious reasons that accounted for stuttering.
Early on in this field, observations and general statements have been declared without actual scientific data. Once awareness is spread on this topic, it stimulates new interest in collecting information about the subject at hand. This helps integrate people with disorders or disabilities into the greater society and promotes understanding and fair treatment of those with an affliction, while also providing hope for new treatments.
Studies vary greatly in their approaches, focuses and methods for recording data. Some are completely contradictory to others, and it is essential for more research to be done in this field to clarify the information available now. In the future, it would be nice to see more interviews with stutterers that provide insight into their feelings about their impediment and effectiveness of treatments.
Tags: Stuttering Foundation, speech disabilities, disorders or disabilities
[...] Cazden writes that : findings can be quickly summarized: on all the measures, in all the studies, the upper socio- economic status children, however defined, are more advanced than the lower socio-economic status children.” (Duranti, 2001: 57.) CONCLUSION For our group's research project we focus on the speech impediment stuttering. We wanted to research theories used in speech therapy that help people overcome this speech impediment. Our hypothesis was that there was no one language related game that was best used to overcome the speech disorder stuttering. [...]
[...] She is the speech therapist at this school and we received a lot of great information from her. First, we asked her for some background information. In regards to how often children come in for treatment, she stated that her language groups (ESE) come in for 90 minute sessions twice a week, and speech therapy groups for 45 minutes twice a week. We would have thought that sessions would be longer or more frequent but that is not the case. [...]
[...] This sparked our group's interest, and for our research project we have decided to focus on the speech impediment stuttering. We wanted to research methods that were used in speech therapy that could help children overcome this hardship. We hypothesized that there would be no single philosophy most effective for overcoming stuttering. It is important that we understand more about this subject because it does affect a great deal of people. According to the Stuttering Foundation's official website, “over three million Americans stutter.” Approximately one percent of the world's population stutters and up to ten percent have other speech impediments. [...]
[...] This creates a more relaxed setting for speech practice and gets the children more comfortable speaking with others, while reinforcing that they are not alone in their situation. When a person stutters or gets stuck on a word they are not encouraged to keep on trying to say that word, but rather are instructed to stop and start over from the beginning of the sentence. This is done to take the pressure off the word and supplies a chance for a breath before beginning again. [...]
[...] Pathological disruption of child's speech rhythms by this anxiety.” Tagmemics is an approach used to analyze stuttering based on distinctions between phone and phoneme in phonology and phonetics, stressing the importance of recognizing differences between the emic and etic views. Sydney Lamb developed a stratificational linguistics theory where he believed there were separate layers of the brain that accounted for one's proficiency in each level of learning a language. Chomsky's take on stuttering is that, record of natural speech will show numerous false starts, deviations from rules, changes of plan in mid- course, and so (Duranti, 55) Freud and those in the psychoanalytic school consider stuttering an oral neurosis in which the becomes fixed at the oral erotic stage of development. [...]
APA Style reference
For your bibliographyOnline reading
with our online readerContent validated
by our reading committee
