Abstracts for Keynote Addresses
An old Native American folk tale tells of the interaction between a fox and a scorpion that ends poorly because the fox didn’t understand enough about the nature of his adversary. In the world of stuttering research, there is a danger that we might end up like the fox – knowing a lot about what stuttering looks and sounds like, but too little about the complex nature of the problem and how it affects the individuals who live with it on a daily basis. The implication of this story is that there may be a need for an increase in the qualitative exploration of stuttering to provide knowledge that compliments the wealth of quantitative knowledge that exists and continues to be produced. In this presentation, a constructivist perspective on stuttering will be offered as one useful framework around which qualitative exploration of stuttering might be organized.
This study aimed to find out more about the day-to-day experiences of parents and therapists who are using the Lidcombe Program and to explore the variability in children’s responsiveness to treatment. Subjects were recruited from five clinics and assessment and therapy data collected on 22 children. Parents of some of these children were interviewed and invited to talk about their experiences of using the treatment with their child. Interviews were also conducted with the recruiting therapists. The experiences of the parents will be discussed in relation to the different components of the program. The questions raised by these interviews and by the child studies will be considered with reference to the literature and some tentative hypotheses formulated that might help explain individual differences. Qualitative research can help to fill in some of the details that must necessarily be left out in large-scale quantitative studies.
All individuals who stutter experience breakdowns in the motor processes that are necessary for fluent speech production. Like most current theoretical views of stuttering, our model posits that these disruptions in motor control for speech arise from multiple etiological factors, including genetic substrates, language factors, emotional responses, cognitive load, and motor processes. Studies of adults who have been stuttering for many years reveal atypical findings at many different levels, ranging from differences in motor processes during speech to differences in evoked responses of the brain to linguistic stimuli, even in the absence of any requirement to speak. From a review of the impressive experimental findings in adults who stutter, one immediately begins to wonder when these differences in brain organization and function appear. Are they precursors to stuttering that are already evident in 2 and 3-year-olds who will become persistent developmental stutterers? Can physiological measures be used to develop better predictors about the likelihood of a chronic problem in youngster who begins to stutter? This presentation will explore these topics and present new findings from our research project on the physiological aspects of young children’s speech production and language processing.
This keynote will address issues that link together the stuttering community – people living with stuttering, families, speech clinicians and researchers. The talk will trace how we got to where we are today including examining “change theories” in the client and clinician relationship, the spread of national and international groups focusing on stuttering, and the use of technology for outreach and education. Finally, the talk will raise questions about the direction of the stuttering community in the future, such as the pros and cons of being part of the “disability community” and the power of International Fluency Association and International Stuttering Association joining forces.
Nowadays bilingualism appears to be the rule rather than the exception in many countries worldwide. As a consequence most clinicians have a fair chance of being confronted one day with bilingual individuals who stutter. Providing services to bilingual individuals who stutter entails some unique problems and questions, however, and research in this area is still scanty. This presentation will discuss and illustrate some of the major issues in stuttering and bilingualism. Answers and evidence will be reviewed with respect to such questions as: Is stuttering more prevalent in bilinguals than in monolinguals? Does stuttering always manifest in both languages? Can one make reliable and valid judgements about the presence and severity of stuttering in a language that is not one's own? Is closeness to the mother tongue a determining factor in judgements of stuttering in an unfamiliar language? Is it advisable to remove a second language in order to reduce dysfluency? Should treatment be given in both languages, or in one language? Research needs will be pointed out as well as some methodological problems. In addition a few suggestions for joint studies will be launched.