Around the world: The One World, Many Voices Congress

Fall is approaching and we are about to embark on another busy semester. Our team have spent the summer travelling to different corners of the world! Elaina who is normally based in Melbourne has arrived in Oslo and will be based here for 3 months, and Hilde who is normally based in Sogndal, Norway will be working in London! Our PhD student, Åse also spent some of her summer travelling. She ventured to Japan to attend the International Fluency Association conference. Here she shares some of her thoughts from her time in Japan:

This summer I was lucky enough to attend the joint world congress on fluency disorders held from 13 to 16 July in Hiroshima, Japan. This congress was hosted by The International Fluency Association (IFA) which is an international nonprofit organization for speech and language therapists and other professionals working with people who have fluency disorders. Since 1994, IFA has hosted a triennial conference that provides an international platform for researchers to present their latest fluency research. In recent years, other fluency-focused organizations have co-hosted the conference with IFA. This year's conference was a collaboration between IFA, The International Cluttering Association (ICA), The International Stuttering Association (ISA), Japan Society of Stuttering and Fluency Disorders and Japan Stuttering Genyukai Organization. In total, more than 600 people from over 30 countries participated at the conference.

 

There are so many benefits to attending conferences. They are a great way of meeting other people with the same field of interest, learning about the latest research innovations and getting inspired and motivated to further develop your own research! Conferences are a place for discussion, for learning and for gaining new perspectives - this conference was no exception - researchers, clinicians and people with fluency disorders all contributed to the conference program presenting their latest research findings and insights. Recently, the IFA established a PhD forum for doctoral students within the field of stuttering research and the congress in Hiroshima provided the setting for the first meeting. I enjoyed contributing to the group discussions and felt fortunate to be a part of a community of people who are all conducted fluency research. Together, we had the chance to share our PhD experiences, learn more about this field of research and the expectations of our international peers and colleagues. You can learn more about the forum and listen to four PhD students discussing their stuttering research on this episode of the podcast Stuttertalk.

 

The IFA conference covers a wide range of topics. Given the treatment focus of the EST project, I was especially eager to hear other researchers talk about preschool children who stutter. In his presentation Early Childhood Stuttering Therapy: Indirect or Direct? Both or Neither? Dr Yaruss highlighted some important considerations about indirect and direct stuttering treatment approaches for preschool children. He reviewed the terms ‘indirect treatment’, ‘direct treatment’ and ‘operant conditioning’ by exploring the original definitions of these concepts and comparing them to our current understanding of them. He discussed the similarities and differences between these approaches and also discussed the possibility that individual children may be better suited to particular treatment approaches. In light of this comment he proposed a decision-making process clinicians should use when deciding what treatment to offer individual children.

Another presentation that was of particular interest to me was Dr Frankens presentation of preliminary long-term outcomes of the RESTART Trial comparing the Lidcombe Program and RESTART-DCM Based Treatment. She reported preliminary long term outcomes on measures including children’s self-report quality of life data and parent and teacher ratings. These measures were collected 5-8 years after the 18-month post randomization assessments. Dr Franken is in the process of preparing these findings for publication so unfortunately I can’t discuss them here but I can tell you they were really interesting!

Four extensive days of lectures and discussions have inspired and motivated me to focus on the work the EST project will be doing this fall and after two weeks traveling through Japan following the congress I think I am ready to get started!

All photos included in the post were taken by the Joint World Congress photographers and shared with permission.