Demands and Capacities Flashcards
What is the demands and capacities model? Who designed the model?
“Stuttering results when demands for fluency from the child’s social environment exceed the child’s cognitive, linguistic, motor, or emotional capacities for fluent speech.”
(Starkweather, 1991)
What does the model propose?
The model proposes that children who stutter possess genetically influenced tendencies for disfluent speech.
What are capacities?
Capacities: The child’s inherent levels of ability that influence their ability to speak fluently.
What are demands?
Are placed on the child externally (possibly by the child themselves). Examples: rapid speech rate, exciting situation, complex language
According to the DCM, what are the four dimensions upon which stuttering is based and developed?
- Motoric
- Linguistic
- Socio-emotional
- Cognitive
What are some examples of motoric demands?
- Speaking when someone is waiting for a response
- Producing more complex or longer utterances
- Saying the individual’s own name
- Answering the phone
- Repeating oneself
- Speaking in a rushed context
What is meant by linguistic demands?
The linguistic areas that enhance the prevalence of disfluent speech include: word-retrieval, sentence formulation, and complex phonological combinations.
What is meant by socio-emotional demands?
Certain emotional states increase the prevalence of stuttering: excitement and anxiety.
What is the goal for treatment using a demands and capacities approach?
To increase the child’s capacity for fluent speech
When providing treatment, what should the SLP keep in mind?
A child’s inherent capacity for fluency cannot be changed. The clinician should:
(a) educate the child on how to use their speech mechanism more efficiently
(b) decrease the demands of the environment
(c) educate parents on how to support fluency, provided feedback etc.
