Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Two types of factors for recovery

The factors increasing the chance of a positive therapy outcome are still largely unknown. The only sure factor is the severity of your stuttering. So if you are stuttering severely before therapy, you are more likely to keep on stuttering than someone who has stuttered mildly. So the bigger your problem with PDS, the more likely you are not becoming fluent after therapy. But that's it! No other factors are known. That is what I found looking at the KST data, and also what others seem to find.

I am still not sure what they are. But I conclude that the path to becoming a more fluent speaker, must be divided into two types of factors:

1. PDS-Specific factors: Severity of your stuttering. And then some guesses: How big is the physical anomaly? How strong are the secondary systems? Are you naturally a fast speaker? Is your PDS due to genetics or neurological incident in childhood?

2. Other factors: Some guesses are. Are you a bit obsessive and pedantic (when it comes to applying your techniques)? Are you often emotionally suffering (from PDS and have a strong motivation to change)? Have you undergone a life-changing experience like a car accident (that seriously affected you and you decided to work your stuttering?) Can you control your impulses well? A change in some neurotransmitter cycle? Are you in the right life situation (to foccus on therapy)?

3 comments:

chirri00 said...

I believe others factors can be include…

a) How much time or sentences do you speak along the normal day? 200 sentences?1000 sentences?
For this, like Van Riper said, some stutter improve very much when his jobs demand a lot of speaking, teacher, radio-taxi dispatcher,
Proyect manager computer (I would like to be…;-) )
b) How do you face your therapy? How a obligation? How a challenge?
c) How is your source of motivation?
d) How do you face your relapsed?
e) Do you have a girl/boyfriend? I don’t know, but the people stutter say that have a boy/girlfriend improve his stuttering….;-)

Tom Weidig said...

actually now i think there are 3 types of factors.

1) internal speech-related

2) internal non-speech related (and common to all behavioural therapies)

3) external

I need to think about this more.

Anonymous said...

Success in therapy also depends heavily on the abilities of the therapist and their attitude.

A therapist must not become upset if progress is not immediately apparent (as was my case). This in turn was demotivating and resulted in disillusionment with the whole idea of therapies (if these guys don't care, then who does etc...) and going it alone, as much as I could do.