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First of two parts
Assistive Technology a Big Help to People
Who Stutter
By John M. Williams
The 10-year-old pupil stands next to his desk. He is a
normal-looking boy and is alert, energetic and full of dreams. Before he
speaks, he weighs his words. In the past when he spoke, his speech was
characterized by repetitions (li-li-like this), prolongations (lllllike this),
or abnormal stoppages (no sound) between syllables. Besides facial and body
movements associated with the effort to speak, he experiences subconscious,
automatic behaviors that include rapid and shallow breathing, rapid heart rate,
elevated blood pressure, sweaty palms, flushing of the skin, eye blinking and
pupil dilation. He also feels fear, anger, relief, embarrassment, frustration
and guilt.
Today, Ben Kordsmeier, a resident of High Point, N.C., is
changing his old speaking patterns. In his left ear, he is wearing what looks
like a hearing aid. In fact, when he started wearing the SpeechEasy (www.speecheasy.com), people asked him,
“Are you wearing a hearing aid?”
After using the SpeechEasy for two years, Kordsmeier
speaks fluently and appears confident. When he finishes, displaying a broad
smile, he sits down. He is not as fatigued as he had been in the past when he
stuttered nearly all the time. “I am no longer afraid to stutter,” he
says fluently in a telephone conversation.
Kordsmeier is not alone in the pride he relishes in being
fluent. Thirteen-year-old Dane Stephens of Overland Park, Kansas, and
15-year-old Austin White of Houston, Texas, have identical feelings. They also
use the SpeechEasy. For most of their lives, the three boys have stuttered. The
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (www.asha.org) defines stuttering as “a
disorder of speech fluency that interrupts the forward flow of speech.”
ASHA is the professional, scientific, and credentialing association for more
than 120,000 members and affiliates who are audiologists, speech-language pathologists, and
speech, language and hearing scientists.
"There is power in fluency,” says Stephens, who
asserts that his life has changed since he started using the SpeechEasy. His
peers no longer tease him and, because stuttering tires the speaker, he is less
tired. He is less angry about his stuttering, is making more friends and feels
more positive about his abilities.
All individuals lack fluency of speech at times, but what
differentiates the person who stutters from someone who doesn't are the kind
and amount of disfluencies.
The SpeechEasy is a portable and inconspicuous
fluency-enhancing prosthetic device that fits in or behind the ear. The product
is designed to emulate choral speech -- a phenomenon that has been found to
induce fluency among people who stutter. For years, it has been known that when
people who stutter speak the same material in unison with another speaker, they
become fluent. This is known as "choral speech." By allowing the user to hear
his or her own voice with a pitch shift and a slight time delay, SpeechEasy
creates the illusion of another speaker speaking at the same time, thereby
emulating choral speech. The device creates this choral speech pattern through
altered auditory feedback (AAF) that consists of a combination of delayed
auditory feedback (DAF) and frequency altered feedback (FAF).
Altered auditory feedback (AAF) means hearing your own
voice in a manner that is slightly different from the way you normally hear it.
It allows the SpeechEasy user to listen to his or her own voice with a
combination of delayed auditory feedback (DAF) and frequency altered feedback
(FAF). Using DAF allows the user to hear his or her own voice with a slight
delay, similar to an echo. FAF allows the user to hear his or her own voice
with a shift in the pitch, so the signal heard is either at a slightly higher
or slightly lower pitch than the user's own voice.
Four factors contribute to the development of stuttering:
genetics (approximately 60% of those who stutter have a family member who does
so); child development (children with other speech and language problems or
developmental delays are more likely to stutter); neurophysiology (recent
research has shown that people who stutter process speech and language in
different areas of the brain than those who do not); and family dynamics (high
expectations and fast-paced lifestyles can contribute to stuttering).
Stuttering may occur through a combination of factors and may have different
causes in different people. It is probable that what causes stuttering differs
from what makes it continue or worsen.
According to the Stuttering Foundation of America (www.
sfa.org), stuttering affects four times as many males as females, and about 3
million people in the United States, approximately 1 percent of the population,
stutter.
Among the many famous people who have stuttered are the
Greek orator Demosthenes; Aesop, the author of children’s fables; Roman
emperor Claudius; scientists Aristotle and Sir Isaac Newton; nurse Clara
Barton; author Lewis Carroll; Bishop Thomas Becket; Senator Joseph Biden;
Congressman Frank Wolf; naturalist Charles Darwin; the Reverend Cotton Mather;
statesman Winston Churchill; Olympic diving champion Greg Louganis;
professional football players Lester Hayes and Bo Jackson; novelist John
Updike; short-story writer Washington Irving; Annie Glenn (wife of astronaut
and former Ohio senator John Glenn; singers Mel Tillis, Carly Simon and Robert
Merrill; former General Electric CEO Jack Welsh; actors Jimmy Stewart, Marilyn
Monroe, Peggy Lipton, Dean Jagger, James Earl Jones, Bruce Willis and Anthony
Quinn; President Thomas Jefferson; former basketball great Bill Walton; and
ABC’s John Stoessel.
“It makes me feel proud to be among these famous
individuals,” Stephens says.
Laura Doty, in an article titled "Famous People Who
Stutter" (http://www.d.umn.edu/~cspiller/stutteringpage/famous.htm),
mentions a number of techniques tried by people who stuttered to gain fluency.
She wrote: "Cotton Mather was an author, a leader of the Puritans, and a
prosecutor of the Salem witch trails. The first book he wrote was on stuttering
in America. Mr. Mather tried many methods to treat his stuttering, some
successful, such as speaking in a drawling or singsong fashion, and some
unsuccessful, such as fasting and prayers.
On the effects of stuttering on Marilyn Monroe, Day wrote:
"(Her) signature breathy way of speaking may have been her way of treating her
stuttering. She seems to have been taught by a speech coach to use exaggerated
mouth movements and a breathy and affected speaking style to control her
stuttering."
On Churchill’s method of obtaining fluency, she
wrote: "(He) was considered the best orator in Parliament despite the fact that
he was a stutterer. He went to great lengths to hide and avoid stuttering. A
great deal of preparation went into all his speeches. Churchill wrote them out
well in advance, often weeks, of when he would have to give them. He memorized
them forward and backward so he could practice them. Before beginning to give a
speech, Churchill would hum discreetly to himself to get his vocal folds
vibrating."
Using technology to control stuttering or gain fluency
does not happen overnight. Some people have found that a combination of speech
therapy and assistive-technology products can produce fluency.
(Assistive-technology products are mechanical aids that substitute for or
enhance the function of some physical or mental ability that is impaired.) The
earlier that stuttering is recognized and treated by a speech-language
therapist, the more effective that intervention will be. Parents or guardians
who notice their child stuttering should seek advice from the Special Education
Services (SES) as soon as possible.
A person growing up with a stutter may feel
discrimination, rejection, failure and ridicule. Those feelings can lead to a
lack of self-esteem and less confidence. A person who stutters might appear
shy, unintelligent or non-assertive, even if that is not the case. People who
believe that stuttering is shameful or wrong or makes them different from
others may harbor feelings of isolation, loneliness and humiliation.
Stuttering was one of reasons that Lewis Carroll, who
wrote "Alice in Wonderland," was not accepted into the Catholic priesthood.
Frustrated and deeply pained about his stuttering, he wrote this poem:
"Learn well your grammar, And never
stammer, Write well and neatly, And sing soft sweetly, Drink tea, not coffee;
Never eat toffy. Eat bread with butter. Once more don't stutter ."
(Part 2 of this article will appear in the next issue
of Independence Today.)
John M. Williams, a stutterer for 56 years, has written
many articles on stuttering. He can be reached at jmmaw@verizon.net.
John William's Blog is available on the home page of
http://www.ilusa.com. |
