Stuttering: "Stumbling-block" – the perception of a voice

Cont. Beginning in issues 22, 23, 24 (2005): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (2006)

YOU, probably,  paid attention many times, that your own speech, which had been recorded to the stereo  or  the voice mail, was perceived by you absolutely differently. Many people  are even  surprised: “Is it  really my voice, and do I really speak so?” I wish to assure you  right away, that the equipment has nothing to do with it. The secret is as follows: when we speak something, we hear two voices and when we listen to voice mail, we hear only one voice. The point is that two channels  participate in the perception of one’s own voice. The first one  - air - has a following way: lips, an external ear, an ear-drum, auditory ossicles, strings-resonators of an internal ear. The second channel – a bone one, which, passing the auditory ossicles and resonators, transfers speech through the bones of a skull directly in the internal ear. 

 Thus, listening to one’s own voice from the outside, we use only the air channel, when we speak something - bone and air channels together. Hence we are deceived concerning  the beauty of our own voice. 

 Normally the air channel should be main. Nature  uses  the bone channel for securing. But sometimes the bone channel becomes   main, leading …  

The first and most harmless reef owing to such state of things  - is the absence of the children's ear for music. It  is clear, that one’s own voice is not controlled by resonators of the internal ear, which have the shape of strings. Many singers for intensification of  the favorable air channel and improvement of melodiousness sing in the headphones.  

The second reef is  more dangerous The bone channel is faster. First, because it is shorter, and secondly, because the sound speed  in the bone higher, than in the air. The child involuntarily starts to speak  more quickly. And we know, that acceleration of the speech rate results in  failure of its stability, occurrence of stumblings and breaks of speech. 

 The third reef is also not less dangerous. The bone channel does not allow to control distinctly one’s own speech, that causes the additional tension  of vocal ligaments. Besides the probability of speech spasms increases. 

 Naturally, the  question emerges, whether  it is possible to block the bone channel? It is possible.  There is a rather simple and reliable  way. It is necessary to do so that these two channels don’t coincide by times, and the brain chooses the  "correct" one. For this purpose you can load from our site the www.rcbkb.com/ a free program for work with headphones and a microphone. The instruction is applied. The second way – is to bring up the ear for music and to practice  singing as the auxiliary, additional method in the complex treatment of stuttering.  

A case from the practice

 Alexander Y. came to our speech center. Logoneurosis of an average severity level, had arisen, when the patient had been 5 years old. Typical situation: speech spasms increase at conversation with strangers. During testing we defined the clear prevalence of bone conduction at the moderate increase of the vocal ligaments tone. The indirect attribute of the bone channel prevalence  of the perception of one’s own voice was the complete  absence of "ear for music" during singing. In complex treatment of logoneurosis they emphasize  the  reorganization of speech perception through the headphones, i.e. the air channel. At first Alexander "refused" to hear his own voice through the headphones - it simply annoyed him - and persistently spoke at the high rate. 

 The correction was successfully finished only in a week, when it was possible to break the wrong stereotype of speech perception. Alexander's parents  told  us, that at present, when Sasha sang with  karaoke,  it was always pleasant to listen to him. It was a by-product of the effective treatment.

Peter SINKOVSKY