This is a speech tool I use with clients as they begin to gain the ability to monitor their own speech. Every child reaches this point at a different time, but I find that this often begins to happen around 7-8 years of age. Instead of modifying every phrase/sentence (as seen in Easy Speech),cancellations are only modifying speech that is disfluent.

WHAT ARE CANCELLATIONS?

  • - Classified as a stuttering modification strategy
  • - Used after a disfluency occurs
  • - Produces a less tense and more "forward-moving" disfluency
  • - Requires you to pause following a moment of disfluency
  • - In the time that you pause, you can identify where the tension occurs (i.e. mouth, tongue, jaw, etc.) and work on releasing it
  • - Requires you to initiate speech again in a more forward-moving way (i.e. may use light contact or a stretch when initiating speech again after the pause, if necessary).
WHY DO CANCELLATIONS WORK?
  • Improves ability to monitor or "catch" your disfluencies
  • - Although disfluencies are often out of a person's control, cancellations help demonstrate a person's ability to make a choice in using more comfortable stuttering (i.e. less tension).
  • - The pause following the disfluency is practice in fighting time pressure- time pressure often being a trigger for increased disfluencies.
WHAT DO CANCELLATIONS SOUND LIKE?
  • - "My, um, my nnnn, um, my na-na-naame (pause, release tension)...name is Brooke"
  • - The above example is of someone who uses fillers (um) to avoid the word he/she can not "get on", which is "name." Instead of resorting to using fillers, the aim is to "get on the sound" using the cancellation, a much more forward-moving form of stuttering.