When the Words Got in Their Way : Therapy: Stutterers may have found a sympathetic ear with the development of the Vocal Feedback Device.
Nine-year-old Eli Thompson sat up in the oversized chair, looked the speech therapist in the eye, took a deep breath and said, “I-I-I-I w-w-w-would like to s-s-s-s-sp-sp-speak r-r-r-r-r-ri- uh, normal.”
North Hollywood speech pathologist Sheila Ochs Goldman sat back in her chair and nodded. Eli had been to therapists since he was 3 and knew all the procedures--maintain good eye contact, breathe slowly, relax--but he still has a horrendous stutter and substitutes words he has trouble pronouncing.
“He has trouble with R-words,” his mother, Corinth Thompson, said. “The other kids used to think it was funny for him to say ‘w-wascally wabbit’ but now he’s getting older and it’s not so funny anymore.”
Stuttering slows down about 3 million Americans. It’s a disorder known to have affected such famous people in history as Aristotle, Winston Churchill and Marilyn Monroe, and more recently Bo Jackson, Carly Simon and Jesse Jackson. Recent studies suggest that this speech condition is linked to a biochemical abnormality rather than an emotional trauma or mental disorder, as previously thought.
More than 4,500 students in San Fernando Valley public schools are treated for some type of stuttering, and the city school district has 265 speech specialists, with a main office in Reseda. In the county school district, the next teacher information session on March 20 will feature an expert from Dallas who will lecture on stuttering.
But what has baffled therapists is why stuttering stops when some people sing, whisper, imitate another voice or don’t hear their own voice. Country singer Mel Tillis has a severe stutter but croons without pause, for example. That phenomenon helped therapists realize that as speech--in Tillis’ case, song--is modulated, the incidence of stuttering is greatly reduced. That knowledge led to the development of the Vocal Feedback Device, which Goldman uses to treat speech impediments.
Part of the device is attached to the neck, near the vocal cords, so that a person can feel the vibrations of his own voice and be conscious of keeping it at a steady cadence. When first using the device, a person also uses headphones to delay hearing his own voice in order to slow down his speech.
Goldman earned a master’s degree in speech pathology in 1965 at Tulane University in New Orleans and later served as chief of stuttering research at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. After being licensed by the American Speech and Hearing Assn., she established her private practice in North Hollywood in 1973. During all this time she has worked with the device’s inventor, George Shames, a speech pathologist at the University of Pittsburgh.
In 1989, after the device was refined and Goldman completed training with Shames, she brought the device to Los Angeles.
In two years, Goldman said, she has treated nine patients with the device, and a number of others have called to investigate.
One of the latter is Eli Thompson, 9. After putting the device around his neck, feeling the vibrations of his vocal cords and then hearing the delayed amplification of his voice, he was immediately able to speak better. “This is weird, it’s like an echo. It could make you very mad,” he said.
But, it takes time and practice to learn how to slow down and evenly control speech by keeping the vibrations steady, Goldman explained.
Another 9-year-old stutterer, Derek Blithe, also recently visited Goldman to check out the device. Derek is shyer than Eli and chokes on his words before he even begins a sentence. After years of trying all sorts of therapies for their son, Pamela and Barry Blithe were skeptical about the device.
“It’s mind-boggling what we’ve spent on psychologists and all kinds of gadgets just groping for a miracle,” Pamela Blithe said.
“There’s nothing a 9-year-old boy does slowly, so it would be a challenge to get him to wear this and speak slowly,” Barry Blithe said. “We wonder sometimes if he wants to stop stuttering as much as we want him to.”
The Blithes, from Huntington Beach, and the Thompsons, from Redlands, had traveled to North Hollywood to get help for their children. They are also forming a Southern California regional group for children who stutter and a support group for parents.
The two families met at a nonprofit National Stuttering Project convention in Anaheim last year and were disappointed to find most of the programs geared toward adults even though stuttering is more easily controlled and conquered at an early age and can disappear by puberty, experts say.
The convention “was the first time Eli met someone else who stuttered and his talking seemed to get better when they played,” Corinth Thompson said. “The boys clicked immediately and became friends.
“Even though we live far away, this is a regional problem and we could arrange meetings and come to the San Fernando Valley if people want to meet with us,” she said. “It’s such a frustrating thing for everyone. Many parents blame themselves.”
“You start wondering maybe I shouldn’t yell so much or shouldn’t spank them, but that isn’t it at all,” Pamela Blithe said. “It’s good to meet others and realize you’re not alone. We don’t know the answers.”
“I don’t either,” said Goldman, who also is a speech therapist at Northridge Hospital Medical Center. “We don’t know the causes and there is no cure.”
But, Goldman said she has had success with people she has trained on the Vocal Feedback Device. One of her star pupils, Paula Grant, is now trying to break into acting and public speaking--a dream she never thought she’d be able to realize.
An outgoing fashion model who was always afraid to speak because of her stuttering, Grant, 32, started using the device nine months ago for as many as six days a week, for at least 45 minutes a day. Now she only has an occasional slip and sees herself eventually weaned from the device, which she can wear outdoors as a decorative choker, with the Walkman-like piece attached to her waist.
The device, marketed by Vocaltech Inc. in New York, is also being used for a wide range of disorders and seems to be effective with people who are deaf, or have had strokes, neurological problems or speech disorders after head injuries, said company founder Richard Melnick.
“It’s being used in many ways, but we want people to use it with the help of a licensed therapist,” said Melnick, who sells the device for $495.
Goldman, who doesn’t sell the device but helps patients learn to use it, warned that improvement takes time and practice.
If parents cannot afford private therapy or the device, area public schools offer their own programs at no cost from preschool to age 22.
“Every device has some successes,” said Kelly Romack, the speech coordinating specialist for the Los Angeles Unified School District, which handles 15,000 speech-impaired students throughout the city.
“Speech therapy for stutterers is extremely valuable,” said Romack, who herself stuttered from preschool through first grade until school speech therapy helped her.
But Romack stops short of endorsing any specific device or private therapy, saying every case is different. She said the district uses new devices when they are available, and has used with success a delayed auditory feedback mechanism similar to the Vocaltech device.
Romack said she is reviewing some innovative programs for stutterers in city schools, which could include a special, short session combining students with similar problems in the same classes. She said a support group as proposed by the Blithes and Thompsons could greatly help young stutterers and their families.
“At the school level we often don’t have the time for individual therapy,” Romack said. “Sometimes we have to identify the stress that may make the child stutter. We try to teach the child that speech is a tool for pleasure, because for so many stutterers speaking is such an ordeal.”
The difficulty of talking kept Grant quiet until she was 3, twice the age when children usually start speaking. She grew up to be a fast-paced talker and was teased about her speech until she was 11 and learned to substitute words for ones she knew she would get hung up on.
Although it isn’t obvious, Grant works hard to control her speech.
“A year ago I would never have believed that I could talk in public,” Grant said. “This Vocal Feedback Device gives me confidence that I can do it.”
This month, Grant plans to give a speech at a local Toastmasters meeting, where members are required to present talks. “I may surprise some people who know me there who don’t know I have a stuttering problem.”
For a list of local speech therapists licensed by the American Speech and Hearing Assn. who use the Vocal Feedback Device, call (800) 548-6225. For a list of all local licensed speech therapists, call the National Stuttering Project, (415) 466-5324. And, for the public schools’ Special Education Services for speech problems, call (818) 997-2345.
