Cluttering and Stuttering
Many of us have experienced stuttering, that annoying situation where you try to talk but the words don't come out clearly.
What about clutter, though? Communication skills are also impacted by clutter. Although stuttering and cluttering have certain similarities, they also differ significantly.
What is Stuttering?
A stutter is a break in the natural flow of speaking or communication. It is the unintentional prolonging or repetition of sounds or words. The majority of the time, stuttering is audible, although it can also occur silently. Stuttering might be accompanied by additional movements and is difficult to control.
Stuttering can also be caused by unpleasant emotions like fear, humiliation, or annoyance. Stuttering is technically a symptom rather than an illness, yet the name "stuttering" is frequently used to describe both the disorder and symptom. The person who stutters is trying to speak while breathing in rather than out, the reverse of what a typical speaker would do. The stuttering is directly caused by this lack of breath.
What is Cluttering?
On the other hand, cluttering is a speech and language processing issue that might impair your ability to speak clearly. It typically leads to quick, disorganized, and frequently incomprehensible speech. Or to put it another way, incredibly hurried speech.
Cluttering is described by the International Cluttering Association as "..a fluency condition in which the speaker's perceived rate is abnormally quick, irregular, or both. The following symptoms may also be present as a result of these rate abnormalities: an excessive number of disfluencies, the majority of which are not typical of stutterers; frequent placement of pauses and use of prosodic patterns that do not adhere to syntactic and semantic constraints; and inappropriate (usually excessive) degrees of co articulation among sounds, especially in multisyllabic words."
People who clutter frequently might not even be aware of it. It is advisable to approach a therapist by searching for the Best therapist near me or a Counseling psychologist.
Clutterers are sometimes instructed to "slow down" or "stop mumbling," so they might not receive a true diagnosis until much later in life.
So how does clutter seem and sound?
1. I and many other speech-language pathologists refer to clutterers as having "machine-gun" speech. Their speech is delivered in short bursts at an "irregular rate," as mentioned above, and may occasionally pause in incongruous places.
2. A person who clutters might also exhibit disfluencies that differ from those we detect in stutterers. Disfluencies including overuse of whole words, incomplete sentences, and interjections are more characteristic of someone who clutters (such as um and well). More unusual disfluencies, like last part word repeats, have also come to my attention (chair-air, bike-ike).
3. Co-articulation is the collapse or omission of a word's syllable.
This diagnosis is complicated further by the wide variation in symptoms and the presence of other illnesses. The traits and co-morbid conditions that have been seen in clutterers are listed below. (Note: Some persons who clutter may experience several of the symptoms or co-existing disorders listed below, while others may experience only one or none at all.)
They have little to no awareness of their peculiar speech style unless someone points it out to them (very different from what we see in stuttering).
Inadequate penmanship.
Thoughts are difficult to organize, and listeners are easily lost.
Learning impairment.
Attention issues (i.e., ADHD).
Disorders of the processing of sound.
Autism Spectrum Disorder/Syndrome. Asperger's
Stuttering (a person can clutter and stammer) (a person can clutter and stutter).
Both illnesses' symptoms could coexist in a patient.
In that instance, the person is categorized as a clutterer-stutterer and will frequently have problems with word finding, reading comprehension, memory, narrative, and, surprisingly, math and science proficiency. if you face any of these symptoms, take help from a psychologist by searching for the Best psychologist in India.
Since the specific origin of the stuttering condition is unknown, treatment can be challenging. By teaching the brain to replicate a desired result, we can try to influence how people speak. This involves modifying speech patterns, which has been clinically shown to benefit patients, and teaching muscle relaxation. Patients who have hoarseness of voice as a result of stuttering may also benefit from altering breathing patterns.
Treatment for cluttering is different from treatment for stuttering and can be considerably more difficult. The patient's knowledge of the speech impairment is the first thing we focus on. The muttering effect can then be stopped by teaching oral-motor coordination activities. In addition, many people with cluttering disease benefit from relaxation exercises, organizational language therapies, memory skills, and rate control procedures, all of which have been clinically demonstrated to be effective.
What should you do, then, if you believe your child to be cluttering?
Your best bet would be to locate a speech-language pathologist with experience treating fluency issues because this is a rather uncommon diagnosis. As you now know, cluttering is a disorder with a wide range of symptoms. There is no "one size fits all" therapy strategy that we can recommend. A unique treatment strategy must be developed based on thorough and ongoing monitoring of the symptoms your child is exhibiting. Here are a few typical therapy goals:
Self-Monitoring: Limited self-awareness of one's own speech is a trait shared by clutterers. Enhancing the client's awareness of his or her disfluencies, rate, and/or misarticulations is crucial. Even though it's occasionally important, calling someone's stutter to notice can initially make them stutter more. Calling attention to someone's speech can, however, help them speak more quickly and clearly overall (at least for a short bit).
Over-articulation: The collapse or omission of syllables is another trait shared by those who clutter. By over-articulating sounds, one can draw emphasis to all of a word's syllables, including stressed and unstressed ones. People who clutter their speech may sound robotic or monotone. Exaggerating stressed syllables and inflection can be practiced alongside over-articulation.
Pausing and Phrasing: With the use of this strategy, one can practice adding more pauses to their speech while paying close attention to where they should go. As kids become older, more focus will be placed on adding pauses based on good wording. For younger children, I will instruct them to pause every one to three words. I frequently translate a client's spoken language, including both the words they speak and when they halt. Then I'll ask them to annotate the document with the locations of the missed pauses. An effective approach to spot when there are way too many words being stated in between pauses is to visualize speech (machine gun speech). Another technique for encouraging individuals to slow down is pausing, which is considerably more beneficial and effective than simply telling them to "slow down."
Give solutions for "typical" syllable-disfluencies: As mentioned above, certain people will exhibit cluttering traits as well as stutter-like disfluencies. Standard stuttering procedures should be addressed in this situation. These consist of withdrawals, cancellations, and similar events. SLP addressing a cluttering child's speech. This specific language example illustrates how a youngster would collapse and eliminate syllables. Seek advice from a Child psychologist in such situation.
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