Stammering

 

 

WHAT IS STAMMERING ?

Stuttering, also known as stammering  is a speech disorder in which the flow of speech is disrupted by involuntary repetitions and prolongations of sounds, syllables, words, or phrases as well as involuntary silent pauses or blocks in which the person who stutters is unable to produce sounds.

WHAT IS THE CAUSE OF STAMMERING ?

There is no single cause of stammering . it is neurological problems , sometimes u fear , tensed , not breath properly , your heartbeat rises  while speaking to a unknown persons and this causes stammer in a person

• family history of stuttering
• family dynamics
• neurophysiology
• development during childhood

Brain injuries from a stroke can cause neurogenic stuttering. Severe emotional trauma can cause psychogenic stuttering.

TYPES OF STAMMERING 

There are three types of stuttering:

• Developmental. Most common in children younger than 5 years old, particularly males, this type occurs as they develop their speech and language abilities. It usually resolves without treatment.
• Neurogenic. Signal abnormalities between the brain and nerves or muscles cause this type.
• Psychogenic. This type originates in the part of the brain that governs thinking and reasoning.

SYMPTOMS IN STAMMERING :

• physical changes like facial tics, lip tremors, excessive eye blinking, and tension in the face and upper body
• frustration when attempting to communicate
• hesitation or pausing before starting to speak
• refusal to speak
• interjections of extra sounds or words into sentences, such as “uh” or “um”
• repetition of words or phrases

TREATMENT FOR STAMMERING

Speech therapy is helpful for stammering . 90% people getting their best result from this therapy,  this therapy gives you confidence and teach you how to avoid fear . This therapy include ;

 1) Meditation

 2) breathing exercises 

 3) talking slowly 

 4) Relaxation techniques 

Electronic fluency device

Altered auditory feedback, so that people who stutter hear their voice differently, has been used for over 50 years in the treatment of stuttering.^[74] Altered auditory feedback effect can be produced by speaking in chorus with another person, by blocking out the person who stutters' voice while talking (masking), by delaying slightly the voice of the person who stutters (delayed auditory feedback) or by altering the frequency of the feedback (frequency altered feedback)

 

Mobile applications[edit]

Stuttering treatment using mobile application

There are specialized mobile applications and PC programs for stutter treatment. The goal pursued by the applications of this kind is speech cycle restoration – I say –>I hear –>I build a phrase –>I say and so on, using various methods of stutter correction.^[76]

The user interacts with the application through altered auditory feedback: they say something into the headset's microphone and listen to their own voice in the headphones processed by a certain method.^[76]

• MAF (Masking auditory feedback). It is basically masking by “white noise” or sinus noises of the user's own speech. Scientists believe that people who stutter can speak smoother when they do not hear their own speech. This method is considered old-fashioned and ineffective.^[77][78][79]
• DAF (Delayed auditory feedback). This method involves sending the user's voice from the microphone to the headphones with a delay of fractions of a second. The goal of this method is to teach people who stutter to drawl vowels and reduce the speech rate. After speech correction with long delays, the application is adjusted at shorter delays which increase the speech rate until it becomes normal.^[80][81]
• FAF (Frequency-shifted auditory feedback). This method involves shifting the user's voice tone frequency that they are listening to compared to their own voice. The shift range can be different: from several semitones to half an octave.^[82][83][84]
• Using metronomes and tempo correctors. Rhythmic metronome strikes are used in this method. The effectiveness of the method is related to the fact that rhythm has positive effect on someone who stutters, especially when pronouncing slowly.^[85]
• Using visual feedback. This method determines the user's speech parameters (for instance, speech tempo) and their representation on screen as visual information. The principal goal of the method is allowing the user to effectively manage their voice through achieving the defined targeted parameters. It is supposed that the user sees visual representation of both current and targeted parameters (such as speech tempo) on the screen while pronouncing.^[86][87]