CLUTTERING: A ‘FORGOTTEN’ SPEECH THERAPY DIFFICULTY – PART TWO

Abstract

Cluttering is an Alteration of the Fluency of Speech of genetic origin that compromises the formulation of the language, its monitoring and regulation and the articulation-execution. It is characterized by increased speed, cluttered and disorganized speech, difficult intelligibility, and poor recording of what is happening.

In the genesis of Cluttering, there is a deficit in the formulation of the language due to its inadequate automation.

The Person with Cluttering (PCC) must learn to monitor a verbose language: order their way of thinking, choose the most important thing, think how to do it, place adequate pauses, modulate the articulation, control the speed and as if this were not enough, add a certain prosody that was inhibited by speeding.

There is underactivation in planning areas of speech. As in stuttering, this hypoactivation would be repaired with an adequate treatment when acquiring skills in the formulation of language.

According to Van Zaalen, inadequate automation produces weak monitoring, because processing capacity is being used for the formulation process. In other words: formulating the sentence and articulating the words at high speed is already difficult, and controlling the production of speech at the same time is impossible.

Cluttering sometimes represents the last stage of a language difficulty associated with a delay in its maturation.