Stuttering. How to not get in 70 %

  In the previous publication, for the second time addressing to the problem of stuttering and logoneurosis, we promised to tell to you why stammering people speak with "not-self”  voice . However we decided to reserve  discussion of this  theme for two weeks, as a lot of letters had come to  the editorial staff,  which content  was brought to the following two important questions.    

1. Is it possible, that  the role of  retrained «lefthanderism» in the occurrence of stuttering is so great?
2. Is it  true, that the main factor of stuttering occurrence is a fright (many logopedists told us about it).

Andrey BLUDOV - director of the Research-and-development center of biocybernetics, continues to discuss a problem of stuttering, he answers the questions of readers.

I SHALL give our statistics: 65-70 % of patients with stuttering and logoneurosis have a sighting left eye, that is, they are "historically” born to be  lefthanders, but they write with the right hand.

95 % of  RUNF students, without speech problems, have an identical sighting eye and a hand, with   which they write.

Very important experiment

  All  parents, whose  children have even insignificant speech problems, whether they are the accelerated speech, speech with stumblings or breaks, breathlessness during speech, additional breaths within words, etc. should conduct  this experiment.    

The essence of the experiment is as follows:

The first step

Put  the child on the chair, facing you, at a distance of about 3 meters. Ask him to stretch forward the right hand, not bending it in an elbow, with the thumb raised up. The other fingers are clenched in a fist. Ask him to look at you with two eyes (i.e. he can’t close his right or left eye).

And now let your child  try to perform, it might seem, the impracticable task. Ask him to close your face with  a thumb  of the right hand. I remind, both child’s eyes are opened.

The child, in order to carry out your task maximally exactly, will subconsciously direct  a thumb  at the line of a sighting eye.

  If you see such picture, your child’s got a left sighting eye.   If the child alternately directs the thumb  first at the left, then at the right eye, the test on «lefthanderism»   is also considered positive. If the child directs the thumb  precisely at the right eye, the test is considered negative.

    The second step  

It is desirable to consult with the oculist for diagnosis of distinctions in visual acuity between the right and left eye. The left eye can be leading, because  it sees  better. For example, visual acuity of the left eye is 1.0, and right eye is  0.7. These data can help our experts at appointment  of the individual plan of speech correction. However, regardless of ophthalmologic data, it is necessary to solve the important contradiction: what to do with the fact, that  the sighting eye doesn’t agree with  a response  hand. This discordance in work of the right and left cerebral hemispheres is the cause of  speech problems, because  a hand is strictly connected with the speech centers. I wish to emphasize once again, that overwhelming majority of our patients have this discordance in work of cerebral hemispheres.

Parents should  quickly consult with   the  logopedist or  the expert of our center, in order that our doctor will decide after inspection, what correction or prophylaxis is necessary for the child. What to do, in order   that excessive loads won’t break  delicate balance, and how to increase  safety factor and stability of speech. By the way, it concerns not only children, but also students, and adults  with speech problems.

The question arises -   is it necessary for all parents to conduct  this experiment not to get in these notorious 70 % ? Quite right. And even if stuttering or logoneurosis  were already demonstrated, we can compensate them. The others 30-35 % of our patients are the people, who began stuttering at the moment of speech formation (the so-called congenital stuttering), after the  intoxications,  narcosis, etc.

Answering your second question, I wish to notice, that the fright in itself is very seldom an independent factor, causing stuttering. Basically the fright is a trigger, which falls  on the "fertile" ground of disorder of  the left and right hemispheres interaction.  I wish to observe, that our data are completely  coordinated with the last data, received at the research of  brain of people, suffering from stuttering, by means of magnetic resonance tomography, and also data of Professor Gerald Maguire from the University of California. However, he offers to influence by means of psychotropic drugs, changing the work of   brain mediators. We have refused the  influence of  medicaments, and, remembering, that our patients are mainly children and young men, we want to find and we find the alternative scientifically-proved techniques.

We invite all to participate in the poll, carried out at our site http://www.rcbkb.com/ru/stuttering and to enter data of results of the above described experiment. There you can find the detailed information on our developments and the latest news on this problem.

Peter SINKOVSKY