Assessing, Evaluating, And Treating People With Cluttering

This study day is aimed at speech and language therapists with already some basic knowledge on fluency disorders. Most SLPs are very familiar with stuttering but less with cluttering. Cluttering is a speech fluency disorder that is often seen in speech clinics and is characterized by a disordered speech rate and rhythm, problems with intelligibility, and rapid jerky spurts of speech with abnormal phrasing patterns. Only during the last decade, there has been an increased interest in the disorder with more specific publications coming out.

While some definitions and theoretical frameworks will be discussed, the focus lies primarily on gaining practical skills in the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of clients who clutter.

Prof. Dr. Kurt Eggers

Kurt Eggers holds a BA in Medicine, MA in SLP, and PhD. in Biomedical Sciences and Developmental Psychology. He is a researcher/docent at the SLP dept. of Thomas More U College (Belgium), associate professor at the Psychology & SLP dept. at Turku University (Finland) and visiting lecturer at the U of Oulu (Finland). He is coordinator of the European Clinical Specialization in Fluency Disorders (www.ecsf.eu), President-Elect of the International Fluency Association (www.theifa.org), and IALP fluency committee member. Kurt has worked clinically for many years, has lectured/published internationally and his research focuses on the role of temperament, attention, and executive functioning in stuttering and speech disfluencies in different populations.

Course Outcomes

• Have increased insight in definitions, symptomatology, and epidemiology of cluttering
• Can administer and interpret the Predictive Cluttering Inventory 
• Can assess cluttering through quantitative and qualitative speech analyses (speech rate, disfluency analyses, speech motor skills) using different protocols
• Can make a differential diagnosis with stuttering
• Have insight into the treatment and selection of treatment goals for cluttering

Program Flow

• Definitions and theoretical frameworks
• Practical skills in the assessment
• Diagnosis of clients who clutter
• Treatment of clients who clutter