Fluent speakers' perception of "blocking"

Blocking (especially when "silent") is not recognized as "stuttering" by many fluent folks. They simply don't have a comparable experience. They often think that we just "forgot" the word or had a "tip of the tongue" occurrence...

Stuttering and acting

The question came up on whether it is true that stuttering does not happen while acting.  Here is my take:

Stuttering is situational, and different situations affect us differently, but I think it is clear that words that come from memory and with a rhythm (as in singing and poetry) are processed differently in the brain, and in ways that, for most of us, "bypass" the areas that are vulnerable to stuttering. It's probably similar for acting, where lines and associated rhythms are memorized. I did do some acting, and I had this experience: my initial rehearsals, when I was using memorized lines, were free of stutter, but, as I "became the character" my stutter crept in again. I was amused when the director started noticing it and "liked my choice" of making the character a stutterer!

Posts form STUTT-L group in the 90's

 The posts that follow are based on emails sent to the STUTT-L group ("Stuttering: Research and Clinical Practice") from 1994 to 1998. My writing is edited and the writing of others is paraphrased or briefly quoted (indicated in blue).

 I attempted to recapture a long dialog about stuttering that I pursued on the STUTT-L list ("Stuttering: Research and Clinical Practice") from 1994 to 1998. This dialog was based on personal experience of my own stuttering problem and a on a great deal of thinking motivated by my scientific training as a biophysicist.

I edited  the list dialog over a period of time, but I lost some of it.

(This dates back to the 1997 like the previous posts)

> From: Darrell Dodge > Subject: Re: Fluency techniques Hi Darrell, I said: 

> > yes, blocks occur "in the brain" but no, 

> > NOT NECESSARILY as a result of fear. Fear certainly contributes to whatever

 > > factors trigger blocks, but its absence is no guarantee of fluency. I say 

> > this from personal experience. I have long eliminated all concerns about 

> > stuttering on any words but an occasional block still manages to catch me 

> > by surprise. NONE is a result of any fear or "expectation" on my part. >  

You said: .... 

> perceptions that are quicker than our consciousness. I think there's pretty 

> good agreement that there are many things like this that can send us into a 

> block: external and internal physical cues, warnings, or reminders of 

> stuttering. Van Riper talks about this and Einer Boberg wrote about residual 

> "micro-stutters" in the speech of "recovered" PWS. These warnings can be 

> "perceived" subconsciously. 

 

 I had a similar discussion with John Harrison a while back. Of course there is no way I can prove that there isn't some perverse subconscious motivation for every single block I have. Nor can you prove that there is. At some point one model simply becomes more parsimonious than the other, at least in my mind and that of others. When blocks happen in very "unloaded" circumstances and side conversations, for instance, I'm talking with my date at a restaurant, and I casually ask the waiter for a glass of water, WITHOUT any thought or concern for the request, and I block on "glass", while I had been completely fluent with my date, you simply have to wonder. I can see your wheels already spinning... I know you can concoct some good psychological reasons why suddenly "glass" could have become so loaded and important that my speech mechanism decides to grind to a halt... but you have to start wondering. Please do, for just a second. Think of stuttering as a grain of sand loose in your speech engine. If you build fear around specific words, you create the bottlenecks where the grain of sand is most likely to get stuck (and stop the engine), but even if you eliminate such fears, the grain of sand is still there and occasionally it gets stuck in random places. The question is not "is this the correct model?". We can't answer that now. Rather "is this model worthy of serious consideration?". I think so, because the consequences are rather profound from the point of view of research. It shifts the focus from the psychological reasons why, somehow, we start fearing words and making our life difficult, to looking for the $%#!! grain of sand that is causing the problem. Let me repeat my mantra: "We start fearing words BECAUSE there is something wrong ... we DON'T CAUSE what's wrong because we fear words". Although, it is certainly true that "fear" makes the problem worse and it can be (and should be) approached with therapy. ... >Van Riper talks about this and Einer Boberg wrote about residual >"micro-stutters" in the speech of "recovered" PWS. ... I worry about the following: "residual (micro?)stuttering" tends to be dismissed by SPLs, and understandably so, for two reasons. 1) It is no longer perceived as a serious "problem" and 2) There are no therapeutic tools to deal with it. This is fine from a "therapy" point of view. I fall into this cathegory and I haven't felt the need for therapy in a long time, but, FROM A RESEARCH POINT OF VIEW, this is an area that has the potential to bring in a deep understanding of primary causes. SLP will say "what's left is no longer THE problem", I say "what's left may well be THE problem".... Just when all the confusing factors that contribute to the problem (fears, learning bad reactions etc.) have been eliminated and one could look at the straight core physiological cause, the research community (it seems to me) packs up and leaves. The fact is: nobody is going to start looking until there is at least some degree of belief in this possibility. This is why I and others keep hammering away at this.

Fear is not a fundamental cause of blocking

From: Winston Purdy
...
>So I agree with Richard H. that the blockage takes place in the brain as a
>result of a (very real) fear that the speech mechanism won't work
...

I don't want to put words in Richard's mouth, but, since so far I have agreed with everything Richard says, I assume we have the same mental "model". At any rate, according to "mine", yes, blocks occur "in the brain" but no, NOT NECESSARILY as a result of fear. Fear certainly contributes to whatever factors trigger blocks, but its absence is no guarantee of fluency. I say this from personal experience. I have long eliminated all concerns about stuttering on any words but an occasional block still manages to catch me by surprise. NONE is a result of any fear or "expectation" on my part.

Elimination of fear will invariably result in fluency improvement, and, for this reason, it's an essential element of any therapy, BUT, if we are looking for fundamental causes of stuttering, it's a red herring, IMO.

Computer models of the brain

> From: Darrell Dodge
...
> But there are neurological processes that could be hypothesized to play a
> part in situations like Vicki's.
....
> Enough. This hatchet-job would probably not impress my biopsych prof. And
> that's just one reason why I need to be hitting the books instead of
> continuing here.
>

Darrell:

It impressed me! It's great that you are able to even begin to think at this level of granularity. It's true that rats can't talk, but it's not completely unfeasible to turn some of these neurological ideas into computer models. Computers CAN speak. The way they have been programmed to do so, so far, has nothing to do with how we produce speech, but it wouldn't be impossible to build a speech producing mechanism based on the kind of control issues we are talking about.

My dream is to produce a speech producing apparatus with a little knob, such that, if I turn the knob a bit, stuttering starts happening. Now, if someone can give me some good arguments why NASA should be funding this type of work...

Some time ago Megan Neilson sent me some very interesting papers on the work she and colleagues were doing at the Univ. of New South Wales. They built a mathematical model (Adaptive Model Theory) according to which a problem in auditory tracking could be responsible for stuttering. The point I want to make is not whether or not their model is valid for this purpose (I've been hoping to get the time to study it carefully...), but that it is in fact possible to start building such models! If Megan is still listening she might give us an update on her work...

Anyhow, Darrell, keep up your model thinking... even though it's sure to be above many of our heads... especially mine.

Onset and ending of "Sudden Fluency"

Victoria Benson reported on her own experience of "sudden fluency" for a period of about two months after an accident (brain stem injury). Then the stuttering returned.

Vicki:

How did people "explain" to you this occurrence (sudden fluency)? It goes completely against all "learning" models. It is as if someone were to suddenly start speaking French...

From a neurological point of view, however, this can be explained as a very organic effect, such as a chemical produced as a result of the injury and recovery process, which happened to offset whatever causes our neurological problem. As the recovery process ended, the original "set point" took over.

Unfortunately this is a kind of experiment I WOULDN'T want to take part in...
Glad you made it back stuttering and all!