The Good Well, in a true cluttering-y type of way, I’ve already touched on some “good” points under the heading of “bad”. As I’ve already suggested, for many people who clutter the problem is really not something that affects their daily living, and thus is not something of great importance. From my position as a researcher, and clinician, this is juxtaposed with the fact that, from an aetiological/theoretical perspective, cluttering must be one of the most fascinating and difficult of all the speech language disorders. Not only are there both speech and language components to the disorder to consider, but there may be subtle receptive components for some. Yet unlike other recognized disorders where we see such difficulties, cluttering exists without (for the present, at least, any neurological diagnosis!) The Misunderstood Cluttering surely, is all about misunderstanding. We as clutterers are misunderstood, and we often misunderstand the reasons for our being misunderstood. (Why didn’t that person get what I was saying? Perhaps he wasn’t listening…) It has also been suggested that we, as clutterers may have some high-level comprehension difficulties, and that we also misunderstand. Having grasped the wrong end of the stick on one occasion, my wife said to me “When most people imagine pounding hooves, they picture horses. You picture Zebras” She may well be right. But then again those hooves could also belong to Buffalos – or Caribou, or Wildebeest… And of course, at a different level, the disorder is itself, misunderstood. More than anything, we need to arrive at a consensus as to the significance of the different strands of the disorder, and in turn to agree on a definition
Much less attention has been given in the literature to affective and cognitive aspects of cluttering than to stuttering. Bennett (2006) describes feelings of apprehension and frustration when clients with cluttering encounter problems with communication. In order to mitigate the negative thoughts of people with cluttering, Daly (1986b) proposed the provision of cognitive training, counseling, attitude change, relaxation, affirmative training, and positive self-talk to clients with cluttering due to their stress, frustration, reduced awareness of the problem, and resistance to pursuing therapy goals. Daly suggested that such therapy goals would improve clients’ listening skills, and the awareness of the speech of others. Based on my experience, I believe that people with cluttering represent a wide continuum of self-awareness and feelings (from denials to incessant concerns; from frustration stemming from one’s own deficits in speaking to frustration at others’ deficits in keeping up with what they are saying). They often had low self-esteem, and felt misunderstood and incompetent. For example, two school teachers were concerned about their students’ inability to understand them. An SLP graduate student was anxious about his future employment. A car mechanic was saddened due to his losing customers because of his unsuccessful communication. A high school student was annoyed by frequent requests to repeat what he said. This young man blamed stuttering for all his problems of communication even though his speech was highly unintelligible and fast due to his cluttering. Another high school student was frustrated about his poor grades and constant conflicts with peers due to his poor social control. A 13-year-old boy was timid and confused due to his mother’s insistence for him to practice his speech exercises instead of playing video games. In sum, the negative thoughts and feelings of people who clutter were not as profound as in cases of people who stutter, but they were present and contributed to concerns about the future, lack of hope for successful treatment, poor self-esteem and low motivation. In order to address the affective and cognitive aspects of clients with combined cluttering-stuttering cases, I modified Bar-On’s ten emotional intelligence (EI) skills for people to succeed in their everyday life (2000). I modified five of these skills for working with people with more stuttering-like symptoms, and five of them for working with people
Proceedings of The 4th world Congress of Fluency Disorders, Canada, International Fluency Association, pp. 488-495. Susca, M., & Healey, E. C. (2002). Listener perceptions along a fluency- disfluency continuum: A phenomenological analysis. Journal of Fluency Disorders, 27, Weiss, D. A. (1964). Cluttering, Englewood cliffs, N.J.: Prentice- Hall. Investigation of speech motor skills in cluttering by means of EMMA *Mariam Hartinger & **Christine Mooshammer2 *Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, **Institut für Phonetik und digitale Sprachverarbeitung Christian-Albrechts Universität Kiel Abstract This study used Electromagnetic Mid-sagittal Articulography (EMMA) to investigate if and how adult people who clutter differ from control speakers in terms of their articulation. The results revealed articulatory differences between these populations in the production of both syllable repetitions and multisyllabic loan words. The syllable repetitions showed fewer specific symptoms of cluttering. In a considerable number of the clutterers’ productions of loan words, however, there was evidence of the reduction and deletion of articulatory movements, in addtion to strongly varying durations and amplitudes of tongue tip movements. 1. Introduction Those characteristics of cluttering that were considered as essential in the present study were: a fast and irregular speech rate, phonological speech errors such as syllable omissions, inappropriate consonant blends or metathesis, and mumbled speech. By using EMMA, the experiment aimed: (1) to examine if a deficit in speech motor skills causes the unintelligible speech in cluttering (Lees, Boyle, & Woolfson, 1996; Daly & Burnett 1996), (2) to investigate the effects of fast speech rate on articulation, and (3) to analyse the spatial and temporal variability
although other nursery rhymes were also selected. The average SPS rates are shown below in Table 4: Table 4: Articulatory Rates of Clutterers and Controls Reciting Nursery Rhymes (Syllables/sec.) Rate Condition ▼ Clutterers Controls Comfortable 4.94 4.67 Faster 5.59 6.04 For this task we once again find only small differences between the groups. The control group, fact, displays a higher SPS rate than the cluttering group in the faster rate condition: .45 SPS greater. In contrast, the clutterers produced .27 SPS more than the controls at the comfortable rate. The ranges of SPS values for the two groups are very much like those for the reading passage: With the exception of the comfortable rate, the controls’ ranges lie within those of the clutterers (Table 5): Table 5: Ranges of Articulatory Rates of Clutterers and Controls Reciting Nursery Rhymes Rate Condition ▼ Clutterers Controls Comfortable 3.53 ▬► 7.00 3.05 ▬► 5.85 Faster 4.29 ▬► 7.78 4.72 ▬► 7.50 The overlap of the ranges again indicates that there are clutterers producing syllables more slowly than controls at both rates, and vice-versa.
Number of respondents 60 90 85 67 Sex (%M / %F) 17% / 83% 48% / 52% 15% / 85% 21% / 79%* Mean age (Years) 26.4 31.2 30.8 33.4 yr* Education (Total years) 13.5 12.4 15.4 Unavailable Marital status (%) Single 77% 37% 73% Unavailable Married 18% 56% 27% Native language (%) 100% English 100% Turkish 98% Russian Unavailable Occupation (%) Professional 30% 32% 23% Unavailable Student 20% 15% 48% Self-identified clutterer (%) 1.7% 8.9% 1.2% 0%* Self-identified stutterer (%) 3.5% 5.6% 0% 3.0%* Self-identified (%) 1.72% 2.2% 0% 0%* Speech-language clinician (%) 0% 0% 0% 0% Past speech therapy (%) 3.3% 1.1% 1.2% 3.0% Past self help (%) 0% 1.1% 1.2% 0% Identified ≥ 1 clutterer or stutterer (%) 51.7% 61.1% 64.7% 55.2% *Estimates from limited data available Table 2 lists selected results for the four sample groups and for all the individuals identified with fluency disorders as a whole. A total of 335 individuals with cluttering, stuttering, or cluttering and stuttering were identified in the four samples. Table 2. Selected awareness results.
St. Louis, K. O. (1992). On defining cluttering. In F. L. Myers & K. O. Louis (Eds.), Cluttering: A clinical perspective. Kibworth, Great Britain: Far Communications, Ltd. Van Zaalen, Y. and Bochane, M. (2007). “The Wallet story”, 27th World congress of the International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics, Proceedings (p.85). THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL PAPERS The Dual Premotor Model of Cluttering and Stuttering: A Neurological Framework Per Alm, Ph.D. Lund University, Lund, Sweden The Stuttering Information Center of Denmark, Copenhagen Abstract An explanatory model is proposed: the dual premotor model of cluttering and stuttering. Initiation of speech segments may be cued by either of two parallel premotor systems, the lateral and the medial. Stuttering and cluttering are suggested to be the two opposite disturbances of the same function: insufficient vs. premature release of speech motor segments by the medial premotor system. Both disorders may be temporarily improved by shifting speech timing to the lateral system. Summary