Friday, March 05, 2010

Clinical symposium: End of May


There is a clinical symposium from May 22nd-26th at Cavtat on the Croatian coast. Suzanna and Mark have managed to get a wide range of therapists with different approaches to attend. Some speakers are clearly chasing phantoms and I have already received two emails from people asking me to condemn the conference! But the conference is a good idea, and exposure to other approaches is never wrong. I just hope that they (a) have real debates and not monologues with occasional giggly blonde meaningless talk, (b) don't fall into self-congratulatory mood, (c) look at outcome data for adults, (d) out Webster, Speak Easy, and Air flow as seriously misleading their patients on outcome, and (e) tell everyone how effective early childhood intervention is based on flawed studies.

Tip: If you want to save money, stay somewhere nearby and do not book via their agency! I overpaid by 50% when I was at the ISA conference!

Presenters

  • Dr Susan Block - Student-Delivered Treatment: Multi-Day Intensive Speech Restructuring
  • Associate Professor Michael Blomgren - The Successful Stuttering Management Program (SSMP)
  • Dr Elizabeth Cardell - Intensive speech-restructuring treatment for children aged 7-12: A piece of the
    management puzzle?"
  • Dr Brenda Carey - Telehealth Treatment for Adults and Adolescents
  • Ms Angela Cream - Self Modeling Treatment for Stuttering
  • Dr Sharon Millard - Palin Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (Palin PCI)
  • Dr Sally Hewat - Time-out: Simply Controlling Stuttering
  • Dr Marilyn Langevin - Intensive Speech Restructuring for Adults
  • Dr Sue O'Brian - The Camperdown Progran.
  • Dr Tim Saltuklaroglu - Assessment and treatment of stuttering using altered auditory feedback
  • Dr Martin F Schwartz - Developments in the Air Flow Technique for the Treatment of Stuttering
  • Dr Rosalee Shenker - The Treatment of School Age Children with the Lidcombe Program
  • Ms Jelena Tadic - Conscious Synthesis of Development: a multidimensional treatment approach in stuttering
  • Ms Donatella Tomaiuoli and Ms Francesca Del Gado - A Comprehensive Multifactorial Program to treat Stuttering
  • Ms Natasha Trajkovski - The Westmead Program
  • Professor Ronald Webster - The Hollins Fluency Program: Advanced Speech Reconstruction for Stuttering

DISCUSSANTS

  • Associate Professor Ann Packman
  • Dr Per Alm
  • Mr Norbert Lieckfeldt
  • Dr Joseph Attanasio

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

oftopic: The end of stuttering on phone?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8549454.stm

Anonymous said...

Associate Professor Michael Blomgren - The Successful Stuttering Management Program (SSMP)

This is a mistake!

Anonymous said...

I see Martin Schwartz's name there too.

Anonymous said...

yeah, major crackpot!

Greedy People

What is the basis for air flow???

Stuttering solved, not solved....

Dr Martin F Schwartz - Developments in the Air Flow Technique for the Treatment of Stuttering

Anonymous said...

One must wonder why most of the speakers are from the Australian Stuttering Research Centre. Why is the ASRC organising their own symposium in Croatia and then adding a few others to make it look legitimate. Does the ASRC consortium have to show that they have presented their research at an international clincial symposium to get continued funding from the Australian government. Why aren't they at the Fluency Disorders Symposium in Antwerp? Weren't they invited? Why? All sounds a bit suspicious to me. I hope for their sake that they get the funding after so much effort has gone into this facade. Do they really believe that adult stuttering can be treated in the ways they propose (e.g over the telephone, Camperdown) or are they caught up in a spiral of having to prove something is viable just to get their continuing funding from the Australian government that is looking for quicker and cheaper ways to treat stuttering? Are they researching to help people who stutter or researching to help researchers who need a job? I hope what I have said is totally incorrect! Interesting??

Anonymous said...

I think the previous anonymous comment is correct (unfortunately).

All of the research being done on stuttering (and I mean all of it) is useless!!!

Anonymous said...

If this is correct then the International Stuttering Association should be doing something about this so that adults who stutter get the treatment and research they deserve. This is scandelous! Nothing has really changed in 40 years. Is it all going t be the same in another 40 years? :-(

Anonymous said...

This symposium sounds riveting...

Anonymous said...

My comment on a different thread is relevant here maybe - maybe Croatia was the "buddies get together".

Reading some of your comments on Mark Onslow's talk cause me concern. There seems to be a lack of hard evidence from his work. Yet if I google on him and his co-worker Anne Packman (who appears to have been a student of his), we see that since 2002 they have brought in 11.3 million dollars in grant funding. I heard Onslow talk a long time ago in my country and his comment then alarmed me ... something along the line of he could not do a proper scientific design (ie and have a group of children who were given some placebo or alternative treatment to Lidcombe) as to leave them out might mean they suffered by not having their stammering cured. And then of course due to the passage of time, many children will talk more smoothly a couple of years later so if they happened to have had a Lidcombe treatment, these 'normal' disfluent kids gaining normal fluency will swell Onslow's group so-called success. And no doubt give him more grants. Australia is a small country but it must have a wealth of research money if its national research council gives 11.3 million over 7 years to a group that have NEVER advanced a testable theory about stuttering but simply re-hash other people's ideas and talk about Lidcombe and its variants, such as doing it over the internet. If you google their grants, there is only one that was to Packman and did not include Onslow on breathing and stuttering and it gave the impression that they might have had a theory at one time, but no doubt that was not a goer as I cannot find a single publication resulting from that grant.

All I can think is that they must have a lot of buddies in the community that appraises such grant applications - pity there were not more scientific appraisers in the stuttering community.

Anonymous said...

As a presenter and an attendee I can verify that the Croatia conference was very interesting and productive. The format allowed for many adroit and constructive discussions about the merits and pitfalls of various treatment approaches. No one approach was given salience over others. The forthcoming textbook based on this conference will undoubtedly be a significant addition to the literature. In my view, all the attendees - many leaders in the field of stuttering - came away with renewed optimism and improved understanding of diverse (and sometimes divergent) approaches to treatment. The organizers are to be commended for an excellent conference.
The high numbers of negative posts on this site are alarming. It is very sad that so many only see negativity among those who have devoted their lives to stuttering research. As a person who stutters, as a research scientist, and a professor of speech-language pathology, I sincerely doubt that most of these negative posters have ever done a thing to help anyone who stutters. This is the first time on this site and I am left quite depressed. First, I view this site as an incredibly self-aggrandizing exercise on behalf of the host. Second, I view it as a disservice to all of us who are working tirelessly, compassionately, and scientifically, to improve the lives of people who stutter. Finally, while the original intent of this site may have been sincere, the result is ultimately a misguided distraction to those who stutter.

Tom Weidig said...

@LastAnonym:

1) I don't censor comments. Everyone is free to voice their opinion. I don't want a highly PC atmosphere like at conferences.

2) You are mixing devotion for stuttering with quality of scientific research. One does not imply the other.

3) Your comment is a typical response. You tell me and others how to behave, but you never actually made a scientific argument.

4) Many young researchers love my blog, because they feel it's an open debate not stifled by professors who think they are so clever and dictate thinking.