Prolonged voice rest following acute laryngitis may result in persistent dysphonia, even after the resolution of inflammation, leading to the development of functional voice disorders. We examined the clinical features and treatment outcomes of patients who developed functional dysphonia after laryngitis. We analyzed 18 patients who visited our clinic between January 2021 and December 2023. All had recently been diagnosed with acute laryngitis and instructed to restrict phonation, but they continued to experience dysphonia despite the disappearance of inflammatory findings. After endoscopic laryngeal examination, physicians provided visual feedback and reassurance regarding the safety of phonation. Direct therapy was then performed by speech-language pathologists using semi-occluded vocal tract exercises (SOVTE), including humming and straw phonation. Treatment outcomes were evaluated by using the Voice Handicap Index-10 (VHI-10), maximum phonation time (MPT), the GRBAS scale, and acoustic parameters such as jitter and shimmer. Among the nine patients who completed post-treatment evaluation, significant improvements were observed in the VHI-10, jitter, and perceptual voice quality. These results suggest that prolonged silence after acute laryngitis may contribute to the onset of functional dysphonia, and that appropriate timing and guidance for phonation resumption are essential for effective recovery.

We conducted a retrospective examination of voice therapy strategies and therapeutic outcomes in patients with functional voice disorders. The study included 29 patients (five males and 24 females) with a mean age of 47.1 years at the time of initial consultation. Vocal abuse was noted in 79.3% of patients, and a history of life events as psychological stressors was found in 72.4% of patients. Both were frequently observed as background factors at the time of onset. Voice therapy consisted of vocal training alone in 20 patients and vocal training combined with either immediate auditory feedback or cognitive restructuring using a cognitive-behavioral approach in nine. On average, patients attended nine therapy sessions, with significantly more sessions required for those who received combined therapy and for those whose symptoms appeared only in specific situations. Overall, there was an 86.2% improvement rate, and voice handicap index (VHI) scores, G scores, maximum phonation time (MPT), and laryngeal endoscopic findings showed significant improvement after voice therapy. There was no significant difference in therapeutic outcome between the vocal training group and the combined training group. However, for patients who did not improve with vocal training alone, introducing combined therapy early on achieved comparable outcomes, suggesting the effectiveness of the combined approach.

I aimed to identify the factors that promote self-esteem in adolescents who stutter. A questionnaire focused on adolescent experiences was administered to adult members of a stuttering self-help group. The survey contained many open-ended questions and was analyzed by using text-mining techniques with Text Mining Studio. My focus was experiences from "awareness of stuttering" to "difficulties in daily life," and I visualized the responses by using grouping and word-network analysis.
The most common age at which respondents had become aware of their stuttering was between ages 6 and 9 years. The main triggers were "comments from family and teachers" and "the experience of being read to in Japanese class." The age at which respondents had begun to perceive stuttering as a negative factor was most frequently between 10 and 15 years; this perception was strongly influenced by "teasing and bullying from classmates" and "difficulty with public speaking."
In terms of emotions, "self-loathing and shame" and "anxiety about interacting with others" predominated and were closely related to low self-esteem. Difficulties in daily life were most pronounced after age 19, with many reporting difficulties in "communicating on the phone" and "job hunting," suggesting a relationship with social anxiety disorder.
These findings suggest that the low self-esteem of children who stutter is influenced by ongoing psychosocial factors from childhood, highlighting the importance of early intervention.

In vocabulary development, the type of symbol (sound/phoneme) assigned to a given meaning or concept varies with age. A child's vocabulary is progressively refined through their own cognitive and linguistic development, following a process of differentiation and integration before eventually converging with adult vocabulary. This study analyzed what kinds of expressions are produced prior to that convergence, based on a vocabulary checklist of 89 nouns administered to the caregivers of children aged 2 to 4. The relationships between vocabulary size and semantic dimensions, vocabulary development as reflected in specific word expressions, and individual differences were examined. As children grew older, the number of adult-equivalent words increased and the number of semantically related words decreased. While acquisition of word meaning remained immature in children aged 2 and 3, the content of the semantically related words also suggested that inferential processing of word meaning is possible from an early age. From age 3 onward, a significant negative correlation was observed between vocabulary size and semantically related words. It is thought that behind children with smaller vocabularies there may be some internal issue intrinsic to the child in response to external stimuli, or some problem with external stimuli such as the language learning environment.

There is a paucity of literature focusing on the detailed differences in speech disfluency between stuttering and cluttering, both of which are considered fluency disorders. We investigated speech disfluency differences across multiple speech tasks in 15 boys receiving stuttering treatment. The two cluttering criteria of JCPC ver. 2 and a working definition of cluttering were applied for disfluency classification. Seven boys did not meet either criterion and four boys were classified as having cluttering-stuttering, as they met both criteria. The remaining four were classified as having stuttering only, as they did not meet either criterion. None of the participants exhibited obvious problems with intelligence or language development. Although there were no clear differences in the occurrence of stuttering-like disfluencies among the groups, the cluttering-stuttering group tended to produce more non-stuttering disfluencies in spontaneous speech and story-retelling tasks. Using multiple cluttering criteria and assessing the frequency of non-stuttering disfluencies may enhance cluttering assessment. Further research is recommended to validate these findings.