Stuttering Services from Vocalsaints
Stuttering or cluttering are the names of issues where the flow of talking is negatively impacted. They can be the cause of significant anxiety in people of all ages. But with the right support, fluency (speaking with ease) is a very realistic goal for most people. At Vocalsaints, our role begins with clearly identifying the nature of the issue. For instance, stuttering or stammering (different names for the same difficulty) can be characterized by one or more of the following:
- Repetitions of sounds, syllables, words, and/or phrases. E.g “Look at the b-b-ball”
- Sound prolongations. E.g. “sssssssnakes are cool”
- Blocks, i.e., inaudible or silent fixations or inability to initiate sounds. The person looks like they are stuck trying to get a word out.
- Excessive use of interjections and non-word fillers. E.g. “The car is like red”, “This is uh boring”
- Revision. E.g. “I want a dr… I want water”
- Word Avoidance. E.g. “I want a cup of tea” when they actually want coffee
Also note that stuttering may be accompanied by other non-speech behaviours such as blinking, body movements or even complete speech avoidance. Whether or not there are non-speech behaviours accompanying a stutter, rest assured that we can help. Call or email today to discuss further.
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Key points about Cluttering
While it may appear similar, cluttering is a separate issue to stuttering. Cluttering is characterized by rapid and/or irregular speech rate, which results in turn breaks down speech clarity and fluency. It is combined with difficulties processing language, i.e., mentally forming the words needing to be said. Cluttering often involves:
- Deletion and/or collapsing of syllables e.g. “I wantwatevision”
- Omission of word endings e.g. “turn the televisoff”
- More typical dysfluencies e.g revisions and interjections
- Pauses in sentences not expected grammatically e.g. “I will go to the [pause] store and get apples”
