Insufficient left brain activity ZT

Noel, what are your thoughts on why the method you describe will cause fluency to become "automatic"? Fluency for me is usually very easy when alone. I also read to my kids alot and that is reasonably fluent. I haven't seen anything automatic moving into other speaking situations. It seems more like a different world than normal speaking.

thanks - bob
Bob,

You bring up a good point. I've known a lot of people who have tried that for years without doing any good. One of early pioneers, Wendell Johnson, recommended what Noel is saying. Johnson called it "building a fluency base." Now, everything works for someone, but for the vast majority of people, it did not work. One of Johnson's contemporaries,
the great Charles Van Riper, Ph.D., did a lot of research and wondered why, if practice makes perfect, reading and speaking when alone did not seem to translate into fluency in other situations. In sum, Van Riper hypothesized that speaking to oneself, or singing, is materially different and uses different parts of the brain than does communicaiton, i.e., an actual impartation of information.

There are more recent theories as to why this does not work. Essentially, in stutterers, there is insufficient left brain activity during speech. The brain can compensate for that by using right brain activity which works fine in certain circumstances, e.g., when you are alone or talking to your dog. But when actually communicating with others, especially in tense situations, "normal" right brain activity takes over, leaving the right side of the brain unable to compensate
for the left brain deficit. Hence, stuttering results. Practicing speaking when alone will not help this situation.

David