Friday, June 29, 2007

Discussion round at ISA2007



From left to right: myself not looking at the camera, Paul Brocklehurst, Suzana Jelcic (conference organisor), Thomas Kehoe (CasaFuturaTech), and Alan Falck (VoiceAmp, thx for the picture)

Thomas and Alan are selling AAF devices. I tried out them out their AAF device. It forces me to slow down, and this makes me more fluent. I am a bit irritated by the noise in my ear(s). Maybe I should try it out longer.

Thomas Kehoe said that in stuttering there is no placebo based on the result from one study, but I replied that I don't buy it. I rather defend the general principle that there is always a placebo effect, and that the study must be wrong/misleading than give up the general principle. But I also said that the more studies are out, the less I will defend the general principle. But I am pretty confident that there is a placebo effect: we saw it in the Pagaclone study. I will write a more detailed post on the devices.

6 comments:

Alan Falck said...

Hi Tom I would like to participate in the devices Discussion, there is lot to talk about, the Picture was courtesy of Dave Rowley.

Anonymous said...

hi!
i read on some forums about these devices (i think it was the forum from "speecheasy" or something)
that the people start to stutter again after a time. So for me these devices are based 100% on
distraction! And i think that shouldn't be the way trying to heal stuttering, at least not with a device.

Ps.: it was so funny, reading some posts saying: "help, i am stuttering again like before, what can i do??" And then
other people gave tips like "You have to change the frequency for a few weeks..."

Sorry, actually this really is not funny, but people pay thousands of dollars/euros to get desperate a few weeks/months later and probably
"falling deeper" then they were before using a device.

The right way would be finding out why we talk fluent when we are distracted from speech and not trying to keep the distraction as long as possible.

O said...

Ravi de voir un autre profil de Tom !

Olivier LB

http://infosbegaiement.blogspot.com

Dave Rowley said...

Hi

Paul XXX is Paul Brocklehurst.

Anonymous said...

Hi Manuel
AAF devices are another tool for PWS. Technology will continue to improve and provides a usefulness (used just like a hearing aid, but it never fixes hearing loss) no cure, but nothing else seems to be either?
Alan

Alan Falck said...

Hi Manuel
AAF devices are another tool for PWS. Technology will continue to improve and provides a usefulness (used just like a hearing aid) but is no cure, but nothing else seem to be either?
Alan