Years ago Wendell Johnson wrote a book entitled _People in Quandaries_, a
general semantics approach to various "mental" illnesses. One chapter was, I
seem to recall, called The Indians have no word for it. This chapter was
about stuttering. The long and short of it was that Native Americans have no
word for stuttering, and the conclusion was that stuttering results from
being labeled as a stutterer. Certainly, the fact that almost all little
kids have non-fluencies and that most of them "outgrow" it, suggests that
pressures to "spit it out" at least contributes to the formation of
stuttering.
An aside, if I recall the story aright, is that at a meeting of the American
Speech and Hearing Association a few years after the book came out, some
speech pathologists brought to the meetings and presented to Johnson a bona
fide stuttering Indian. The trick was that as a orphan child he had been
adopted by a missionary couple. The husband was a stutterer!
A few other oddities: Generally, stutterers sing without stuttering, or act,
or do stand-up comedy. They also talk with little children and pets without
stuttering.
Finally, while I haven't heard much about it since I came up here, one of
the best research and therapy programs was at Hollins College just north of
Roanoke, Virginia. The director of that program is Ronald Webster who is a
psychologist. With the exception of a MA in psychology, Hollins is a
prestige all-female liberal arts college.
Al
Al L. Cone
Jamestown College <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
North Dakota 701.252.3467 X 2604
http://www.jc.edu/users/faculty/cone
The Internet is democracy at its ugliest. Apologies to Paddy Chayefsky
who said this about television
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul C. Smith [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2000 3:13 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: A couple of random questions from my SMC intro psych
students.
> 1) Is there a biological basis for stuttering?
> Nancy Melucci
A speech-language pathologist I know tells me the following:
=================
Good question...not a simple yes/no answer...
There are thousands of theories but no definitive answer to this question.
There has been cases of stuttering that's onset follows traumatic
neurological injury, although this is not typical. Stuttering also has been
shown to be familial, suggesting a hereditary component. Most case occur
during the age of 3-5 years, when children are acquiring language and may
not have the motor skills equipped for the job. Factors such as stress,
competition to speak, too high expectations can also exacerbate the problem.
Prognosis for recovery with treatment in the early childhood years is
usually quite good. The psychological impact from stuttering as an older
child or an adult can be devastating to some people, and then we see
development of avoidance and secondary grimace type symptoms.
================
Paul Smith
Alverno College
Milwaukee
