Graded Exposure and Use of Thiruppugazh for Stuttering: A Case Study

Social anxiety and stuttering are highly related; anxiety can make stuttering worse, the person creates a feedback loop about his/ her stuttering, thus makes the person to stutter even more. The present research is focused on reducing the intensity of stuttering which an individual experienced as a result of social anxiety, and it also tries to understand whether a song from the Tamil Poetry “Thiruppugazh” helps in improving pronunciation/ helps in learning to practice pause in appropriate place. The current research is a single subject intervention study which initially assesses the individual's social anxiety by using Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale, then the person is gradually exposed to the challenging situation with series of practice, preparation and repeated real time exposure. The result shows that as the intervention session proceeded, the subject gained improvements gradually. During the end of the intervention, the subject is reported to have gained confidence and was able to overcome the difficulties that he reported during the initial state of the intervention. This indicates that the graded continuous exposure, with a speech practice helps an individual to reduce the social anxiety and stuttering, and increases the confidence level and eventually the self-esteem.