Why the Diagnosogenic theory of stuttering onset has been dispelled by Essay

Why the Diagnosogenic theory of stuttering onset has been dispelled by recent literature - Essay Example Neurophysiology- Recent research has shown that people who stutter process speech and language in different areas of the brain than those who do not stutter. Family dynamics-High expectations and fast-paced lifestyles can contribute to stuttering. Technically known as dysphemia, it has sometimes been attributed to an underlying personality disorder. Brain scans of stutterers have found higher than normal activity in brain areas that coordinate conscious movement, suggesting that in people who stutter speech occurs less automatically than it does in most people. In 1939, a controversial study, on the possibility of "creating a stutterer", was conducted by University of Iowa speech pathologist, Wendell Johnson and his graduate student Mary Tudor. The study tried to create stutterers over the course of 4 months, using 22 unwitting orphans from the Soldiers and Sailors Orphan's Home in Davenport, Iowa. Ethically acceptable at the time, it was designed to induce stuttering in normally fluent children and to test out Johnson's "Diagnosogenic theory" a theory suggesting that negative reactions to normal speech disfluencies cause stuttering in children. The study divided the orphans into 3 groups. 6 normally fluent orphans would be given negative evaluations and criticisms regarding their speech, another group of 5 orphans who allegedly already stuttered would also receive that treatment, and the remaining 11 would be treated neutrally. The study concluded that the children given negative evaluative labeling went on to develop persistent, permanen t stutters. The study was influential at the time, with many speech pathologists and child-health and educational professionals accepting Johnson's theory. In 1988, Silverman first reported the results of this study in the Journal of Fluency Disorders and labeled it "The Monster Study". In June 2001, the San Jose Mercury News revealed this study to the public for the first time, leading to widespread controversy and debate about scientific ethics. Soon after, University of Illinois professors Nicoline Ambrose and Ehud Yairi wrote a paper discrediting the 1939 study, revealing flaws in data collection and method, as well as pointing out that none of the orphans actually did develop a permanent stutter. The relevance of the Ambrose-Yairi study 63 years later is that the authors conclude, in effect, that the 1939 thesis did not prove the theory with which it is credited. In other words, the researcher did not, and could not have, "caused stuttering" in the subjects. For this and many other reasons the authors also conclude that most all of the ethical criticisms of the study are misplaced and unjustified. While criticism of a developing child's speech can certainly make a present stutter worse, it does not create a stutter. The major findings, as have been reported over the last several years in the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research (JSLHR), question longstanding concepts about the onset and developmental trends of early childhood stuttering. Like most other speech disorders, stuttering onset was gradual and occurred under uneventful circumstances, that early symptoms included only easy repetition of syllables and words, and that parents helped create the problem by reacting negatively to normal disfluencies. Stuttering onset was sudden in at least one-third of the children, was severe in nature,

Strategic Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 10

Strategic Management - Essay Example Cutting a niche in the market and expanding it will enable MC Industries Company to prepare for the competition in the industry. This will involve formulation of the strategies that will attract the customers into the company as opposed to the rival companies. It will entail performing a market research analysis to identify the brands which the target market appreciates and the need that should be addressed to the bridge the market gap. After that, the company will design products to suit the needs and preferences of the customers and then carry out advertisement of the products to inform the market of the availability of the new product in the market. The most important thing to note here is that the market share will be increased as the company is able to brand its products favorably compared to the rival companies. The company has set out strategies that will enable it to make competent adjustments in the market in order to facilitate expansion and increase future investment. The company has set out the objectives to maintain high standards of marketing and improve the secondary advertisements in order to expand the market share. The target is to earn 20% of the market share. To achieve this, several measures have been put in place. First, the company is organizing its operation in way to facilitate entry of the company into the market. Teams are formed and assigned corporate responsibilities which are mandated with different functions such as market survey formulate marketing strategies, choose target segmentation, branding of products for each target segment, market testing to evaluate the level of MC Industries Company competiveness, review of the brands and redesigning of the brands based on the information got from testing the market. This information will be used in the future investment of the company which will ensure tactful expansion into the wider market