Oxford dysfluency conference going digital - reflections from the EST team

The European day for speech-language pathologist on March 6th focused on telepractice and digital technologies. Not only intervention and treatment are going online this days, conference are, too. In this blog post, we reflect about the Oxford dysfluency conference, which was held digitally in January this year.

The members of the EST group were presented with a variety of posters and talks, both of EST-project data, but also on other topics within stuttering such as Stuttering in an Age Cohort of Children with Down Syndrome by Kari-Anne Bottegaard Næss and colleagues.

Here we have sampled a few “snaps” and thoughts about the conference.

Ineke Samson presented a poster with the title Severity of overt stuttering in females and males, self-assessed and assessed by SLPs, in relation to associated symptoms. The poster accounts for a study where the aim is to investigate impact of stuttering on life quality in female and male teenagers and young adults who stutter, when controlled for overt stuttering severity. In an earlier study by Ineke and colleagues (Samson, Lindström, Sand, Herlitz, & Schalling, 2020) it was concluded that female teenagers who stutter report a larger impact of stuttering and more negative reactions to communication than their male peers. The present study aimed at extending the findings in that report, by adding measures that enable comparisons between overt stuttering severity (both self-rated and rated by SLPs) and the impact of stuttering on life quality. https://app.oxfordabstracts.com/submissions/191713/question/28472/download

Many interesting results and perspectives were reported and discussed during the conference. What Ineke found especially worth considering was researchers who suggested and argued that we should appreciate, rather than single out and separate, differences that exist in people. Why not describe stuttering as part of "neurological diversity" instead of a "neurological deficit” since diversity is part of the human experience? Many interesting presentations and discussions highlighted how stuttering in the (medical-) society is perceived as a problem that must be "fixed" by the person her- or himself. Instead, we may consider whether it is not society that needs to be reformed and "fixed", that everyone is included and can participate on equal terms.

Åse Sjøstrand presented a poster together with Linn Guttormsen and Marthe Vasvik Varpe about Caregivers ratings of concern for stuttering in young children. 

Linn related their poster to a presentation by Scott Yaruss about assessing stuttering severity with self-report. She commented, that attending this talk before our poster was a good preparation and stimulated thoughts concerning  what stuttering severity is if we only include the perspective of the listener and not the person who stutters. In our study, we assessed mothers', fathers' and kindergarten teachers' perceptions of stuttering severity and also their level concern. What we learned from this study was that we have to take into account the perspective of the person who is providing the information when conducting assessment. We were lucky to have engaged SLPs and researchers coming to our poster presentation, asking us questions and giving us new ideas. For instance, the study conducted by Millard, Zebrowski, and Kelman (2018) also revealed interesting mechanisms in relation to parental concern for stuttering.

Concerning specific EST-data, Melanie Kirmess presented a poster entitled Do early childhood professionals in Norway distinguish between stuttering and normal childhood dysfluencies?,

co-authored by Hilde Hofslundsengen, Linn S. Guttormsen, Elisabeth Holm Hansen and Kari-Anne Bottegaard Næss. This poster was based on some of the data from our multi-disciplinary survey for early childhood professionals. In Norway, we have historically used the term ”stotring” in addition to the more defined term stuttering. Hence, we wanted to know how professionals understand those two terms and not the least, if they use them to differentiate between stuttering and normal dysfluencies.  We were also curious if this topic concerning a small Norwegian feature would attract any other listeners at all, and yes – it did, and we had some nice discussions and feedback.

Missing out on meeting colleagues in Oxford, the EST group concluded the Oxford conference with a digital evening ”wine and talk” seminar for ourselves, having the time to discuss other presentations and impressions. The best thing with a digital conference like this is definitely the opportunity to watch presentations for some additional time after the formal conclusion of the conference.