Jeanna’s Thesis

Posted: May 12th, 2010 | Author: jeanna | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , | No Comments »

Thesis

Miscommunications…

Adaptive Behaviors…

Super-Humans…

My Thesis idea deals with Communication Disabilities.

It’s a theme that I feel like I’ve been encountering more frequently this semester than ever before in my life. From the friends I’ve been making at school, to the readings and “Design Fictions” assignment we had last semester Major Studio, and on a more personal note, in my own daily encounters in NYC as a stutterer. It’s definitely a topic that I hold close and one that I haven’t been ready or emotionally able to delve into until now. Initially, I would like to focus on bringing awareness to some of the communication disabilities that exist, in hopes of gaining the understanding and patience of the general public instead of the ridicule or ostracism that comes from being misunderstood. Things are good, but they can be better.

In general, there’s a huge discrepancy between medical disciplines when it comes to stuttering, and it’s very difficult to address treatment from a wholeistic standpoint. Speech therapists treat it as a physical disability that the body can “relearn” over time through repetition and behavioral therapy. Psychologists recognize cyclical issues that feed stuttering such as stress levels and anxiety. Psychiatrists and general practitioners are open to discussing prescription drugs that can help alleviate or counteract hormonal or neurological imbalances that negatively affect stuttering. However, there’s no one doctor, psychologist or therapist that will recognize all of these factors that contribute to stuttering…. and I find this very frustrating.

In the past, I thought a lot of this disconnect was due to the particular city I was in or the lack of inter-disciplinary communication when it came to the disorder, but after moving to NYC and expecting a more knowledgeable field, I was really surprised to find out that it’s the same here… if not worse. It took me tons of phone calls, dead ends and references to track down a medical professional that was even remotely familiar with stuttering, let alone specializing in it. This leads me to conclude that this lack of communication and may be symptomatic of the disorder itself, and I’d like to really delve into some of the miscommunications, or even silences that have gone on within the stuttering community, and hopefully give a voice or provide an outlet for stutters to be heard or have their issues addressed.

Relating it to the Communication Field

Are those with disabilities related to Communication, (oral, aural, orthography) more likely to major or concentrate their career in a Communication related field? What attracts them/us? Maybe we are drawn to communication studies in search of alternative, innovative forms of communication with peers.

Adaptive Behaviors and Technological Advances

I would also like to really dig into the adaptive behaviors that the disabled have had to learn to cope with their disability, and how people with various disabilities have benefited and been hindered by digital social networking tools and methods of communication during both adolescence, college and today.

One of the conversations that sparked this idea was with my roommate about her boyfriend who has dyslexia. She recounted their early conversations via AIM and texts were a little slow and she thought it was odd. After getting to know him better, she found out that he was running all his IMs through spellcheck and running his texts past friends to make sure they were spelled correctly before he sent them. He was so worried that her first impression of him would misconstrued as being “stupid” for not spelling correctly, when his spelling errors were due to dyslexia.

Conversely, I feel especially free when communicating via IMs, e-mails and text messages. I feel like I can type or “say” what I mean without worry about judgements or negative feedback on the actual delivery. When first contacting a person, (if the situation is appropriate) I’d much rather prefer texting or e-mailing a person than calling them. I usually feel very uncomfortable calling a person unless I know them personally, and am sure that they are aware that I stutter.

A little-known fact about stutters are that they have extremely high reading levels/ reading speeds. There are many different theories about why or where this comes from. From a personal standpoint, I always had to read ahead during grade school, for fear that I would be called upon to read a paragraph or answer a question that included a word that I knew I would stutter on. When I read now, I realize that I’m not reading word for word, I’m looking that the beginning of words and syllables for phonetic sounds and associating a word with the first few letters. I’m assuming that this type of reading comes with a different level of comprehension and treatment of words in terms of semantics and content.

I also “stutter” when I play piano. When I’m alone and playing I have total control over my hands and movements, but when playing in a concert or for an audition, I find it very difficult to start the piece and begin different movements of the piece in the same way that I would stutter on the first word(s) during a speech due to performance anxiety. I’ve heard similar stories about people are deaf and “stutter” while signing.

I’m really curious to find out if there are additional stories like these, relating to other speech, learning and hearing disorders that would be interesting to bring out into the open, with the hope of a greater understanding/empathy for people with communication disorders and a shared history within the community.

Relating it to Technology/ Medium

How many mediums or forms can communication take that doesn’t involve a voice falling on and being comprehended by an ear? How have modern technologies helped people with communication disorders? How have they hurt? Is there a technology that can be made to filter or reform stuttered speech?

I described my idea for thesis to Clay, and he had a really interesting take on it. I was getting into a lot of the social implications of the project, and he was like, “I wonder if you could make an iphone app that would play back stuttered speech as fluent speech?” I had really never thought of this kind of implementation until now, (which is a total testimony on how important it is to talk to people about your thesis). I remembered editing our documentary for the LVMH project this semester. I hated listening to myself speak on camera so much that I often turned off the audio while sifting through clips and would just watch the waveform. Over time I realized I could literally see when I was talking compared to when other people were talking because of the size and shape of the waveform.

My plan for a summer prototype is to play around with protool filters, iphone apps, speakers… all kinds of things that relate to capturing sound and manipulating it to see if it’s possible to create a filter or reverb that could filter or adjust the waveform of stuttered speech to emulate one of fluent speech.

References/ People to Contact:

From Parsons:

-Michelle Levine, a PhD Psychology student doing research on how stuttered speech is comprehended

-Michael Schober, Dean and Professor of Psychology

- Dave Carroll

Medical References:

New York- based physicians who are familiar with or specialize in neurological differences between stutters and non-stutters

Dr. Crane, Christine Johnstone, Wendy Wolfson

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