Date of Award

8-1-1974

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Communication Sciences & Disorders

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine, compare and describe the effect of alpha brain-wave conditioning upon the speech of two adult stutterers.

Five sessions of baserate measurement were followed by a sequence of conditioning sessions (in which an electronic brain-wave monitor was used to train subjects to control their alpha rhythms), after which the speech of the stutterers was re-evaluated by a procedure which was identical to the baserate procedure. The four speech activities which were investigated were: reading without feedback of alpha-band brain activity from the monitor, monologue without feedback from the monitor, reading with feedback from the monitor, and monologue with feedback from the monitor.

Subject I displayed a significant decrease in the number of stuttered words and severity ratings in monologue without feedback from the monitor when the re-evaluation measures were compared with baserate measures. Number of stuttered words and severity ratings were not significantly affected in the three other speech activities for Subject I. However, Subject II exhibited a significant increase in the number of stuttered words in both unmonitored and monitored reading samples when the re-evaluation measures were compared with baserate. Severity ratings were not significantly affected in either unmonitored or monitored reading samples. There were also no significant differences between baserate and re-evaluation measures of number of stuttered words and severity in either unmonitored or monitored monologues for Subject II.

This procedure showed that a significant relationship exists between the number of stuttered words and the combined effect of session number, total time for reading sample, duration of alpha rhythm, severity rating of stuttering, and control of alpha rhythm in monitored reading samples for both subjects. There was no significant relationship, however, between severity rating and the combined effect of session number, total time for reading sample, duration of alpha rhythm, severity rating of stuttering, and control of alpha rhythm in monitored reading samples for either subject. There were also no significant relationships among the variables for the monitored monologue speech activity for either subject.

Download

Share

COinS