Saturday, July 24, 2010

Holding your breath = Holding your stutter?

I have been writing before about my suspicion that mechanisms responsible for holding your breath longer also modulate the occurring and expression of stuttering symptoms: read Diving and Stuttering, and Swimming Crawl and Stuttering. Yesterday, I made a similar observation again. I felt much greater control over my speech and did not feel the need to get the words out immediately, was able to wait a bit to continue speaking, and able to control the expression of my symptoms more. And yesterday I was holding my breath for 2 minutes without much struggle. I just felt that the struggling behaviors while holding my breath were present but less severe and I was more able to ignore them. So what does this mean for stuttering?

Well, as I wrote many times before, I believe in a neurological deficit that increases frequency and length of internal jams in speech initiation. And I believe that most stuttering events are learned behaviors arising from conditioning processes due to neurological stuttering events, and easily triggered by different stimuli to which they have been associated with. The expression and occurrence of the symptoms and occurrence is directly related to the ability to control those jams in order to avoid a triggering of learned behaviors.

In holding your breath, your brain needs to override the strong reflex to take a breath, and this is only possible if the reflex is weak or the control of the inhibition of the reflex is strong, or both. On such days, the brain is probably also more able to resist the urge to react to a small neurological jamming and wait, or to resist triggers by stimuli conditioned on stuttering events.



But then there is also another effect from swimming: learned behaviors.Often people have panic even if only emerged in water for a few seconds. Here it's not about that reflex, but about a learned responsive: their brain has learned to be scared of the water, and then they react with panic. Of course, panic completely weakens the brain's ability to control the breathing reflex. So this is a different second phenomena. I do not experience this when holding my breath in water. But I did have such a learned response when swimming crawl as I always chocked on talking breath. Many stutterers experience this when speaking: first situation, then panic, and then total loss of control. Such responses can be unlearned, but the ability to resist an urge for breathing is of a different nature.

How can one test this? I would suggest the following. Record the severity of stuttering each day, and at the same time ask someone to hold his or her breath. And see whether the two are correlating.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I never realized this. I'd try and see if it does any good.
On another note, Tom, where do you get these befitting pictures for your posts?

Tom Weidig said...

google image.

Anonymous said...

Wow! I have never in my life read such nonsense in relation to stuttering. You win my crackpot award.

A different "Anonymous" said...

Google Images:

How did you find that picture?? I've searched for "hold breath", "hold breath nose clip", etc. But none of them come up with this picture.

What search terms could you possibly use to find a picture like that!?

Leah said...

I have only read a bit of the article but I'm very interested in your ideas on a neurological deficit which increases frequency. I'm a 6th form student doing an extended project in speech blocking and was wondering if you would mind extending on your ideas for me, or possibly allow me to interview you for use in my article?

Tom Weidig said...

Hi Leah,

I am always happy to help an inquisitive mind.

my email is tom.weidig@gmail.com or Skype me under tom_weidig

Best wishes,
Tom

Deb lanese said...

My son is 3 years and 11 months. I noticed at say 2.5 he was holding his breath. He sleeps with a little blanket he smells while he sucks his thumb. His thumb is in his mouth, but he's not sucking persay, he makes a movement with his tongue and a sound with his mouth that we all refer to as "anoinging". I noticed when he's anoinging, and I am sleeping w/him, he'll take big pauses in his breathing. It was strange- I have 3 other kids and nothing like it. So a months ago I began to notice a studder. Now, at this point, I'm convinced it's a studder. Hard 'c's' can go on for quite a while. So I searched up breathing and studder and found your article. Please email me if you have any info on what I should do while he is so young. I think the anoinging has to stop . Dlanese@optonline.net