These general orientation tests for a norm and its pathological variation
were the basis upon which I proceeded on broader lines with a further and
more exhaustive investigation with the following points in view:
To what extent is visualization weak?
Is it weaker in the worst cases?
Is it less and less weak as cases appear less severe?
Is it the same for past, present and future memories?
Is visualization equally at fault in all sensory areas of the cortex?
Do cases approach normal visualization processes in proportion as they
progress in their cure? and
Lastly, numerous other minor queries presented themselves.
All these questions were answered in the following research, which after
thus much orientation found a more complete and final form.
In order to answer these questions I formulated the following series of
tests to the number of twenty-four in all, and asked them in series to
nineteen stutterers, making almost four hundred tests:
1. Speech:
Say, Today is sunny.
The dog ran across the street.
Submarines will sink all the steamers.
2. Motor:
Do you dance?
Did you ever skate?
Would you sew for a living?
3. General Sensory:
How does a pinch feel?
Did you ever get hurt?
What would you like to do if it was very hot next summer?
4. Hearing: (Eyes closed)
Do you hear anything?
Did you ever hear a rooster crow?
What sounds would you like to hear next summer?
5. Sight: (Eyes closed)
What do you see now?
What did you see yesterday?
What would you like to see next summer?
6. Smell: (Eyes closed) (Pen to nose)
Do you smell anything?
What have you told by smell?
What would you like to smell next summer?
7. Taste: (Eyes closed)
Do you taste anything?
What have you been able to tell by the taste?
What would you like to taste next summer?
8. Muscle Sense: (Eyes closed)
Put one arm up; the other like it.
Put one arm up, down; the other like it.
How would you hold a hand to read from it?
This long series of questions with careful introspection tests upon the
content of consciousness constituted then my main research in the field of
stuttering. Perhaps further details in explanation of the questions chosen
is unnecessary. Three or more questions on introspection were asked at each
test.
4. FINAL DETAILED RESULTS are found in the following conclusions as drawn
from 1440 answers.
In our average conversation a visual picture is created before we begin
utterance. Severe stutterers never visualize at all. In direct proportion
that these cases become less severe, does visualization increase in
frequency, strength and continuation in consciousness before and during
utterance.
When severe stutterers are free from spasms they visualize, and when they
stutter they do not visualize.
When mild cases are free from spasms, they visualize, and when they stutter
they fail to visualize.
In a word, when visualization is present stuttering is absent; when
visualization is absent stuttering is present.
This is true not only of EACH UTTERANCE, in most cases, but is true of
severe as well as mild forms as a whole.
Stutterers gain in visualization as they approach cure.
For past, present and future memories: visualization is slightly more
frequent for past and future.
Therefore stuttering is an indication of absent or weak visualization either
in isolated words, occasional stutterers, mild stutterers or the severest
type, either before or during speech, or both.
The slump, then, in personality which I showed last year as the main thing
in stuttering as its cause and condition, is thus found by further
psychological analysis, to be a slump in the power to consciously visualize.
By personality I mean as mentioned above the composite of collaborative
activities that lie between the low sensory repository areas and the low
motor expression areas. In other words, personality includes all those
collaborative processes that lie between the sensory intake areas and the
motor output areas; in a word, any unexpressed use the mind makes of its
intake. Conscious visualization is a part of personality processes, then. In
my last year's paper([1]) the whole matter was left vague. Here something
definite and constant is found. In other words the psychoanalytical method
revealed no conscious subconscious cause. Granted there is room here to
"interpret" (or create according to Freudian mechanisms) a definite
subconscious complex, a step which I could not feel justified in taking; I
leave this to better psychoanalysts than I. For me to twist stutter
phenomena to comply to a theoretical complex is unscientific to say the
least. But the psychological method--as represented by this paper--shows a
definite constant cause for all the phenomena of stuttering.