Content
Fluency treatment will, or should, include both fluency shaping as well as stuttering/fluency modification. Shaping: Reduce anxiety and sensitivity about stuttering in front of others. Adopt some new habits of breathing, pronunciation, and vocal use that will smooth out speech a bit. Get rid of secondary stuttering behaviors like tension, vocalizations, or tics. Modification: In-the-moment strategies to identify and modify dysfluencies as they occur. Cancelation, bouncing, preparatory set, sliding, are all examples that are commonly taught. Oftentimes speaking for a PWS pre-treatment is both dysfluent and effortful. Some strategies can force speech to be more fluent, but they're so effortful that it's hard to rely on them all the time. But many people report that they experience a huge improvement with strategies that make speaking less effortful, even if they still stutter.