Speaking Easy for Stutterers
This post was written by Mrs. Blog It AllAugust 18th, 2008
In an article by Kenneth Chu for ABC news, there are more than 3 million Americans whose spoken words might sound as if they were doctored by a disc jockey. Unexpected pauses, frequent repetitions and stretched sounds make saying “hello” seem to take an eternity. These people are stutterers.Dennis Drayna, a geneticist at the National Institutes of Health, says that stuttering “is one of the great medical mysteries of all time.” Scientists are not sure what causes the condition, but a new device called the SpeechEasy is helping more stutterers speak clearly. These people still had difficulty after going through the years stuttering therapy.
Those who have trouble speaking do not necessarily have trouble communicating in today’s world of text messaging, constant e-mailing, and social networking sites. Technology allows stutterers to communicate without the spoken word, and therefore without a stutter. But no technology can take the place of human speech.
Even today, as a speech pathologist who interacts with patients daily, Kalinowski still dislikes speaking on the phone because “we calculate in milliseconds if the listener will hang up, be patient, laugh, finish what we are saying,” he explained, adding that “the sting of the telephone is like a hot iron.”
As a result, Kalinowski and his team at East Carolina State University invented the SpeechEasy in 2001. The SpeechEasy fits comfortably in the ear and operates on a phenomenon known as “the choral effect.” When people who stutter speak the same material in unison with another speaker, or in a chorus, they no longer stutter.
When using the SpeechEasy, stutterers hear a delayed playback of their own voice, at a slightly different pitch, which emulates the choral effect. The ability of the choral effect to aid speech fluency has been widely established, but only recent technological advances have allowed researchers to create a device that would be small enough to fit inside the human ear. The device does not cure stuttering, it aids speech, just as eyeglasses help people with poor vision see clearly.
According to the Stuttering Foundation of America, present-day individuals who stutter include athletes Tiger Woods and Johnny Damon, actors James Earl Jones and Bruce Willis, and ABC’s John Stossel.
The future generation, comprising an increasingly wired youth, will benefit from technology in the form of wireless communication and devices like the SpeechEasy, Kalinowski says. “If I had text messaging when I was an adolescent or young adult, I would have used the phone rather than driving my car all over town trying to locate friends at their home.”
Kalinowski, whose own childhood was marred by painful stuttering experiences, believes that “those who stutter have nothing to be ashamed of today and devices like the SpeechEasy open doors to new jobs, social endeavors, educational opportunities and more.”
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Tags: speecheasy, Stuttering, stuttering therapy