Announcing 'Stammering Research' - Stammering Research - UCL

Editorial for Stammering Research
Stammering Research. Vol. 1.
Readers of Stammering Research will be aware that it offers two novel features in the area of
fluency research: 1) The target article and commentary format that is already lending itself to lively and
stimulating debate. 2) Provision of data, software and other resources that it is hoped will have some
lasting value to the research community. Sharing data is not, at present, widespread in this research
community, partly because of difficult (but demonstrably surmountable) ethical and data protection
issues. Sharing software has its own problems such as clashes between academic and commercial
interests. There are also issues of what to do with data and software that have been made available. In
this issue of Stammering Research, the UCL group provide data that demonstrate the effects of
frequency shifted feedback on voice control. These can be used for illustrative and teaching purposes
or, like the data reported in the previous issue by Howell and Huckvale (2004), for audio, perceptual or
other analysis that would be welcomed as submissions to Stammering Research.
The current issue of Stammering Research includes two more target articles (authored by Acton,
2004 and Sage, 2004), along with a commentariy and response to one of them. There has also been
some on-going debate about the Savage/Lieven and Furnham/Davis articles which appeared in
previous issues and these are published as continuing commentaries. It has become apparent that more
time is needed for preparing commentaries than has been allowed to date. On the other hand, it is
important that authors of target articles receive speedy feedback and for some commentators to make
their point/s immediately. To meet these demands, the rules for submitting commentaries have been
extended (the old convention is retained for commentaries that appear at the same time as a target
article and the new convention introduced of publishing later commentaries as on-going
commentaries). Details are given in ‘Notes about commentaries to Stammering Research’. One article
that appears as a continuing commentary (by Gordon and Ingrid Blood) was sent, but not received, by
email in time to be published at the same time as the target article. We wish to apologize to these
authors and if other commentators have experienced such problems, they should let the editor know.
The two further publications that appear in the ‘Research data, software and analysis’ section both
concern frequency shifted feedback. Many people have contacted the edotor of Stammering Research
to express interest in trying out frequency shifting and delayed auditory feedback techniques. I
searched round for any software that would allow people with the required hardware to do this for a
free trial period. Artefact have some such software that is supplied under these conditions. Serge
Joukov from that company describes this software in the article in his paper in the research data,
software and analysis section of Stammering Research. The description of the software is included so
that anyone with a PC reading Howell’s (2004) review or reading and listening to the demonstrations
of the effects of FSF in Howell, Davis, Bartrip and Wormald (2004) (that also appears in this issue of
Stammering Research) can access and try out these manipulations immediately. The software is
available any where in the world though, unfortunately, the software is not available for Mac users (if
anyone has a Mac program that makes such manipulations, they should let Stammering Research
know). It should also be pointed out that when the software produces a frequency shift, there is also a
time delay which is 40 ms at minimum (Joukov, personal communication). Thus this, and all other
commercial devices, do not produce a pure frequency shift (unlike the original method used by Howell,
El-Yaniv & Powell, 1987). Speech synchronous frequency shifts are less distracting than delayed and
shifted speech and, consequently, procedures with no delay are more acceptable to long-term users. If
anyone is producing a time-synchronous frequency shifting device (particularly one that is available for
a free trial period), Stammering Research would like them to submit a report for consideration for
publication. Please note that Stammering Research (and the BSA) have no commercial interest in these
products and the publication of these details should not be seen as an endorsement of the said products
or imply support of such approaches to alleviating stammering to the exclusion of any other. In this
connection, Judith Kuster was asked to examine Joukov’s article to see whether it raised any ethical
concerns. Thanks are expressed for her comments in this matter (these have been incorporated). Also,
as stated previously, reports on other forms of treatment are welcomed as submissions. A lot of the
reports that have appeared concern frequency shifted feedback, partly because these procedures are
instrumental and the effects are easily demonstrated with audio data (thus, they lend themselves readily
to the report format Stammering Research offers). Reports of other treatment procedures will also
appear (such as Sage’s report of the Apple House Fluency Course’s approach to treatment.
The current issue includes reports of the results obtained in the Summer of 2004 on three vacation
studentships supported by the British Stammering Association. At present, these studentships are open
to students in the United Kingdom and interested parties should see the BSA’s website
(http://www.stammering.org) early each year for details.
The next issue of the journal (which will complete volume 1) will include a report of an analysis of
some of the Howell and Huckvale (2004) data. Family history data on groups of persistent and
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