Goal setting behavior of parents of beginning stutterers and parents of nonstuttering children.

Abstract

Parents of young beginning stutterers and parents of nonstutterers were studied to determine whether they differ in the goals they set for their children on a nonverbal task. The experiment represents a partial replication of an earlier work which studied older children with a longer stuttering duration. A group of 28 children, in whom the stuttering duration did not exceed eight months, was investigated. Controls were matched for age, sex, and family occupation level. Parents were each placed in separate sound treated rooms from which they observed their child. After each set of five trials on the Rotter Board the child’s score was reported to the parents, who then were required to estimate the child’s subsequent performance score. Reporting of the child’s score was controlled so that each parent was exposed to a standard schedule of fixed degrees of successes and failures. The two groups of mothers differed significantly on three of the four measures considered, with the mothers of stutterers setting significantly lower goals for their children. The two groups of fathers did not differ significantly on the same four measures. Theoretical implications are considered briefly.