STUDY BRINGS HOPE FOR STAMMERERS

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33516, 23 April 1974, Page 19

STUDY BRINGS HOPE FOR STAMMERERS

By a special correspondent)

NEW YORK, i Stutterers have exis-' led since men anc i women first roiled words 1 together to form ! phrases and sentences. ; Egyptian h ieroglyph ics; testify to the unhappy situation of those who jolted rather titan rolled their speech. But despite its long history this ancient problem has de- ! tied solution and still! frustrates and embarrasses millions of people. In the United States, where; about two million people stammer their way through: conversations, hopeful signs, of a solution to stuttering! have emerged from a pro-! gramme at the University of Southern California. The . 'programme, according to its! director. Dr William Perkins, owes a debt to research done! by two Australians, Dr Roger Ingham, a psychologist, and Dr Gavin Andrews, a! psychiatrist. The programme, the cul-; mination of six years re-; search, has enabled half the participants permanently to ■ acquire normal speech patterns. The other people showed the ability to do so, and i grasped them for a short time. but. out of the pro- . gramme, slipped back into I their old ways Dr Perkins, a speech pathologist psychologist, explained that stuttering resulted from a lack of co-ordina-tion between the business of producing or generating voice! and of moulding that voiceinto speech sounds. Complex activity Most oi us unconsciously! achieve that smooth link be-! tween phonation and articu-1 Nation, but for the stutterer! Jt is an immensely complex; !activity. It is the most exact-! ing and rapid of any human; co-ordinating activity. The first step in the programme is to slow down the stutterer’s speech. This is nothing new. The parents of a stuttering child nstinctivelv tell him to ! “speak more slowly.” The result is usually a child who j stutters slowly, or whose speech pattern still jolts along. To achieve normal speech, the stutterer must learn to manage the breathing stream, .for it is the flow of our breath that determines the smooth flow of words into, phrases and phrases into - sentences. Breathing patterns This has been the programme’s major contribution !towards eliminating stuttering: to make people conscious of the way they control their breathing patterns and to fit those breathing patterns to ;the demands of flowing speech. “If you get the breath stream started at the beginning of a phrase and keep it flowing through the phrase. I, without getting hung-up, then it is physically impossible to | I stutter,” Dr Perkins says. ) “We start by getting people to speak in an exces-i isively ’breathy’ way so they! are conscious of the air flow-j ; ing all the way through the ' ‘ phrase. ! “The people in the pro-'

gramme found it easy to achieve this drawled way of speaking, and achieved it in the first or second session. It

took about two weeks to achieve a flowing speech that was expressive rather than ghoulish, and had the other characteristics of normal speech. ’■ But it seems that only those committed to eliminating their stutter maintained the flowing speech. The others became more intent on expressing their, ideas than on paying attention to the mechanics of their! newly-acquired speech patterns. It takes about three months of conscious effort Ibefore the stutterer can rest (easy. About 100 people, aged ; from 15 to 60. took part n the earlier part of the programme, when treatment was individualised. Group programme In the past months, 20 people have taken part in an intense and more successful! group programme, which was' based on the ideas of the; Sydney researchers. Dr Ingham, now head of) the School of Speech Therapy I at the t’.oyal Alexandra Hos-I pital for Children, and Dr Andrews, of the University of: New South Wales School ofj Psychiatry at Prince Henry! Hospital, had been getting better results than Dr Perlkins’s group. The Australians! also provided Dr . Perkins' with a way of measuring the: rate of a person’s stutter. Dr Perkins says that the best advice he can give! parents of a child who stutters is to speak more slowly i : themselves, to speak to the child the way they want him Ito speak to them. The researchers found that !the parents of a stutterer (often spoke too quickly, set-; (ting a model for the child (that he could not master.! ! Unable to speak at the; (parents’ rate, the child) !stumbled and developed a I stutter. This was especially true if; the child was insecure. Stut-l ■ termg became his way of! ! speech. Psychological basis Dr Perkins believes there; is some psychological basis Ito stuttering and that some, people find it pays to retain! what seems to others an 'embarrassing impediment. “Stuttering is a very effec-, live way of getting attention," Dr Perkins said. “A secure child will be (embarrassed by the kind of: lattention his stuttering at-! 'tracts. While an insecure! .child might be frustrated. ~e; will see that his stuttering) 'buys the attention he is not' normally given. “Not many people will- : interrupt, a person who stut-j ters. ) “There are a surprising; (number of stutterers who are (content with the way they speak ‘Then, for son. others, stuttering is a powerful ego) defence. It protects them j j from having to cor. c to grips' 'with the challenges of life,’ :and it provides a ready' (rationalisation for their fail-) : tires." Psycho-therapeutic treatment. however, has not ) proved an effective way of ; !treating stutterers. In many! leases, a person’s psychologi-i ■cal problems are solved, but! not his stuttering. In only about 10 per cent'

of cases does a stutterer lose his impediment througn working out his psychological problems.