What's an Error Anyway? Reframing Persistent Speech Patterns

What counts as a “speech error,” and who gets to decide?

Guests: Dr. Philip Combiths, PhD, CCC-SLP; Dr. Naomi Rodgers, PhD, CCC-SLP; Dr. Rick Arenas, PhD; Dr. Carlos Irizarry Pérez, PhD, CCC-SLP; Jessica Nico, MA, CCC-SLP, TSSLD, ASD-CS & Matt Phillips, MA, CCC-SLP

Earn 0.10 ASHA CEUs for this episode with Speech Therapy PD

Watch on Youtube

The guests share what led them to question traditional, deficit-based labels and how their collaboration developed through shared interests in neurodiversity and lived experience. Drawing from ongoing interviews with adults with PSPs, they bring forward perspectives that are often missing from clinical decision-making and challenge long-held assumptions about what needs to change and why.

About the Guests: Dr. Naomi Rodgers, PhD, CCC-SLP, is an assistant professor at the University Iowa. Her interdisciplinary, trauma-informed program of research centers on the cognitive, emotional, and social aspects of stuttering experiences and therapy.

Dr. Rick Arenas, PhD, is an associate professor at the University of New Mexico. His primary area of research is developmental stuttering. In his early career he focused on the neurobiological mechanisms involved in the variability of stuttering across contexts.

Jessica Nico, MA, CCC-SLP, TSSLD, ASD-CS, is a New York and New Mexico–licensed pediatric speech-language pathologist with a decade of experience serving children and their families in clinic, school-, and home-based settings.

Dr. Philip Combiths, PhD, CCC-SLP, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Iowa and Director of the Clinical Linguistics and Disparities Lab.

Dr. Carlos Irizarry Pérez, PhD, CCC-SLP (he/his), is an Assistant Professor in the University of New Mexico’s Speech and Hearing Sciences Department. He received his PhD in Communication Disorders from the University of Texas at Austin.

Matt Phillips, MA, CCC-SLP, is a person who stutters, a speech therapist, and a PhD student at Michigan State University. He is passionate about helping kids, teens, and adults who stutter become more confident and joyful communicators, which he does through his work at the Sisskin Stuttering Center using an Avoidance Reduction Therapy for Stuttering (ARTS®) framework.