Clarisse Marquis Colvard earned her Doctorate of Speech-Language Pathology in 2018. She has over 40 years' experience as a speech language pathologist. Clarisse developed the speech-language pathology program at Thomason Hospital in 1991 and in 1994 she founded the Silva Clinic, an outpatient clinical habilitation and rehabilitation center serving all ages and demographics. Clarisse and her colleagues continue to provide individualized speech-language pathology services which empower the patient and family and facilitate excellent patient outcomes.
WHAT IS STUTTERING?
According to ASHA, "Stuttering is the most common fluency disorder, is an interruption in the flow of speaking characterized by specific types of disfluencies, including
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repetitions of sounds, syllables, and monosyllabic words (e.g., “Look at the b-b-baby,” “Let’s go out-out-out”);
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prolongations of consonants when it isn’t for emphasis (e.g., “Ssssssssometimes we stay home”); and
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blocks (i.e., inaudible or silent fixation or inability to initiate sounds).
These disfluencies can affect the rate and rhythm of speech and may be accompanied by
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negative reactions to speaking;
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avoidance behaviors (i.e., avoidance of sounds, words, people, or situations that involve speaking);
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escape behaviors, such as secondary mannerisms (e.g., eye blinking and head nodding or other movements of the extremities, body, or face); and
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physical tension"
Information obtained from Fluency Disorders (asha.org)
WHAT IS CLUTTERING?
According to ASHA, "Cluttering is another fluency disorder, is characterized by a perceived rapid and/or irregular speech rate, atypical pauses, maze behaviors, pragmatic issues, decreased awareness of fluency problems or moments of disfluency, excessive disfluencies, collapsing or omitting syllables, and language formulation issues, which result in breakdowns in speech clarity and/or fluency (St. Louis & Schulte, 2011; van Zaalen-Opt Hof & Reichel, 2014). Individuals may exhibit pure cluttering or cluttering with stuttering (van Zaalen-Op’t Hof et al., 2009).
Breakdowns in fluency and clarity can result from
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atypical pauses within sentences that are not expected syntactically (e.g., “I will go to the / store and buy apples”; St. Louis & Schulte, 2011),
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deletion and/or collapsing of syllables (e.g., “I wanwatevision”),
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excessive levels of typical disfluencies (e.g., revisions, interjections),
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maze behaviors or frequent topic shifting (e.g., “I need to go to...I mean I’m out of cheese. I ran out of cheese and bread the other day while making sandwiches and now I’m out so I need to go to the store”), and/or
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omission of word endings (e.g., “Turn the televisoff”)."
Information obtained from ASHA, Fluency Disorders (asha.org)
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