Saturday, May 02, 2009

Ask me any questions!

I invite you to submit questions about stuttering. I will answer them all! ;-)

I just got an email from saying that someone else said that "if you stutter when you are alone, you have brain damage". Unfortunately, I do not have access to the newsgroup. But here is my answer.

The fact that you even stutter when alone indicates that your emergence of stuttering is relatively independent on social speaking situations. And indeed suggests a neurological cause rather than a socially or behaviourally conditioned cause.  However, if you are a person who does not stutter when alone, you cannot use this argument and then say that therefore your stuttering is purely psychological. Think of your old car with an old battery, it works fine in dry and warm weather but it won't work in wet or cold weather. You won't notice the deficiency (stuttering) in dry and warm (when alone) weather! You might very well also have neurological issues (maybe less than those who stutter when alone) that get revealed when your brain has to worked at full speed and demanding conditions! However, I am not denying that social situations can strongly modulate the severity of stuttering. But we need to distinguish between two types of causes: a) much greater neurological demand on brain b) triggers to learned behaviour. Social situations always create greater neurological demands leading to a higher chance of jams leading to stuttering behaviour, and depending on the situation learned behaviour might additionally be triggered leading to stuttering behaviour (avoidance of eye contacts, fillers, tension, and so on).

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Here is my question: is pagoclone an anti-anxiety drug?
is pagoclone a good medication for the treatment of stuttering?

it seems like pagoclone reduces anxiety, which would seem to reduce stuttering (theoretically). So do you like pagoclone as a treatment for stuttering. Take it once daily for the rest of your life and forget about it (vs. other stuff you can do)

Is this correct: pagoclone reduces anxiety and therefore reduce stuttering, NOT pagoclone reduces stuttering directly...

also, side effects like weight gain?

Rex said...

Hi Tom,

You wrote:
"The fact that you even stutter when alone indicates that your emergence of stuttering is relatively independent on social speaking situations."

This might be true in some cases, but I don't think it's necessarily true in all instances. A person may develop a kind of "phobia" of speaking during social situations, and this phobia (which manifests itself as a stutter) may extend even to situations when he/she is alone or talking to a cat or dog. The mind is a very complicated thing :)

Tom Weidig said...

In principle this could be possible. Notice I used the word "indicate" and not "prove".

But I would say that:

a. you need to have a trigger to "live out" your phobia. No spider, no panic.

b. You could make your argument with a person who is became mute after an illness, but this doesn't sound right.

c. Even when I am not in panic, people do stutter.

The death nail really comes with the many arguments ON TOP of the above reasoning:

a. genetics. How come stuttering is strongly influenced by genes?

b. brain imaging. At least 30 studies have seen clear functional and structural differences.

Tom

Rex said...

> you need to have a trigger to "live out" your phobia. No spider, no panic.

The trigger could be the sound of your own voice. The Edinburgh Masker works for *some* stutterers because it prevents the stutterer from hearing his/her own voice.

> genetics. How come stuttering is strongly influenced by genes?

Is it? How has this been proven? Have they discovered the genes responsible? No they haven't. Have they done tests on twins *reared apart*? I don't know, but I doubt it. What is the contribution of genes and what is the contribution of environment? Lets face it - after all these years of research, nobody has a clue.

>brain imaging. At least 30 studies have seen clear functional and structural differences.

These structural differences: are they congenital, or are they caused by the fact that a stutterer has been stuttering all his/her life? Remember, years of stuttering behaviour can change the brain ... plasticity, and all that. Nobody can answer this with certainty.

One thing about stuttering which has been largely been ignored by researchers and commentators is that there may well be more than one variant of it - even though they may manifest themselves as the same behaviours. As I said, the brain is a very complicated thing :)

Einar said...

Hi Tom,


I think I have quite a tricky question:

“How much stuttering is socially acceptable?”

I know this is not a “politically correct” question. It not a scientific question, but rather a psychological or sociological one. I know stuttering is a disability, so nobody should be discriminated because of his stutter. But doesn’t the freedom of oneself end where the freedom of others starts? Let’s take a couple of examples: A group of people is having a discussion, one of those folks has a stutter. Do the other participants in the group have to wait each time he adds to the discussion? Or should the stutterer remain silent at times in order not to disrupt the flow of the discussion? Would it be rude or understandable if one of the other participants cuts his sentences off?

Or another example, a speaker at a conference stutters. Do the listeners have to sit and wait patiently for him to get his message across? (bearing the consequences: lost time, patience…). Up to what degree? How long can a block be to be "socially acceptable"? Would it be rude or understandable if one of the listeners loses his patience and walks out?

Anonymous said...

Hi,

I have a general question:

How is Stuttering A Misunderstood Disability?

How did you overcome your stuttering?