Component 5

COMPONENT 5. FACILITATION OF ORAL-MOTOR PLANNING AND COORDINATION

Rationale:

Current research supports targeting oral motor planning and coordination. Many people who stutter, both children and adults, speak with reduced articulatory movement, reduced jaw opening and increased velocity of movement. Slowing the speaking rate while increasing articulatory movement, facilitates increased spacing and timing of articulatory movement which enhances fluency.

Research:

Ingham (1984) - cited Zimmerman's studies which state that the articulator(s) of the stutterer have a much less synchronous relationship during fluent and disfluent productions, than do the articulators of non-stutterers.

Riley and Riley (1986) - support the inclusion of an oral-motor planning goal in therapy if warranted through diagnostic procedures A 1983 study by Riley and Riley revealed that 87% of dysfluent children experience difficulty timing laryngeal, articulatory, and respiratory events which support accurate syllable production.

Riley and Riley (1985) - state that some children do not master the necessary motor aspects of speech in time for normal fluency to develop, thus requiring intervention. They divide oral motor coordination to include three areas: accuracy, smooth flow, and rate.

Zimmerman (et. al.) (1983) - concluded that inadequate central processing capacity is the subsoil of stuttering. They hypothesize that stutterers are limited in their abilities to deal with the relationship between motor speech output and it's associated feedback.

Activities/Techniques

Activities for slowed speaking rate may be used to target this goal.
Encourage and reinforce over-articulation during all speaking activities once the child has established a reasonable level of fluency. If over-articulation is introduced too early, clients have difficulty focusing on both fluency techniques and over-articulation.
If the client exhibits severe groping and posturing behaviors, or other behaviors which may be characteristic of developmental dyspraxia, more direct dyspraxic treatment may be warranted.