10/9/13-Lecture 9

Question 1

What kind of a disorder is cluttering?

Answer 1

-Cluttering is a fluency disorder

Question 2

What is ASHA’s definition of cluttering?

Answer 2

A fluency disorder characterized by:

 1. A rapid and/or irregular speaking rate
 2. Excessive Disfluencies can co-occur with stuttering
 3. Other symptoms

Question 3

What are “other symptoms”in ASHA’s definition of cluttering?

Answer 3

• language errors: syntax, sequencing
• phonological issues
• attention deficits

Question 4

What does cluttering involve?

Answer 4

• excessive breaks in the normal flow of speech
• disorganization in thinking and speech planning
• talking too fast or irregular

Question 5

True or false: Clutterers have issues just with organizing speech and language

Answer 5

False, they also have difficulty organizing their life in general

Question 6

What do parents usually report about children who clutter?

Answer 6

• cluttering appeared soon as the child started to talk
• child was “never really fluent”
• they may call cluttering “stuttering”

Question 7

What are the differences between cluttering and stuttering?

Answer 7

1. early cluttering is not cyclical nor variable
2. maintains a level of severity
3. other speech and language delays usually evident
4. developmental milestones are frequently delayed
5. while normal limits cognitively, may have difficulty reading and writing. Most do well in math and science.
6. clutterers aren’t necessarily sure of what they want to say; in contrast, those who stutter know exactly what they want to say

Question 8

What do you need to do to identify cluttering?

Answer 8

you need to listen to conversational speech

Question 9

What do you need to listen for in conversational speech?

Answer 9

• doesn’t sound fluent, but not stuttering
• content of utterances, just not right
• may be confusing, disorganized
• word finding difficulties
• excessive revisions
• irregular speech rate; bursts of speech with delays and pauses

Question 10

What are some other issues related to cluttering?

Answer 10

• little or no struggle; few if any concomitant or secondary behaviors
• mispronunciations
• slurring of speech sounds
• poor intelligibility
• may have fixed intonation patterns
• deleting of non-stressed syllables in longer words (fortunately–ferchly)
• learning disability
• difficulty with handwriting
• attention issues; distractibility
• poor organization skills in day to day life
• little or no awareness of problem
• therefore, no struggle, no frustration or shame
• suggestions to “slow down”, “think about what you want to say” seems to help clutterers

Question 11

What are some areas to evaluate for clutterers?

Answer 11

• rate
• articulation
• receptive/expressive language
• auditory comprehension and processing skills
• motor evaluation-gait; posture; balance; muscle tone
• awareness of cluttering

Question 12

What is the treatment for cluttering?

Answer 12

1. increase awareness
2. reduce rate
3. concentrate on details of speech production
4. language-memory sequencing
5. work on increasing attention span/focus

Question 13

What is the prognosis of cluttering?

Answer 13

• progress can be made, but may be slow
• most clutterers are not aware of the problem
• may deny problems
• at times lack of motivation