Social and Cognitive Impressions of Adults Who Do and Do Not Stutter Based on Listeners' Perceptions of Read-Speech Samples

Lauren J Amick,J Devin Mcauley,Soo-Eun Chang,Juli Wade

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01148

Lauren J Amick, J Devin Mcauley + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01148

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Abstract

Stuttering is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by frequent and involuntary disruptions during speech production. Adults who stutter are often subject to negative perceptions. The present study examined whether negative social and cognitive impressions are formed when listening to speech, even without any knowledge about the speaker. Two experiments were conducted in which naïve participants were asked to listen to and provide ratings on samples of read speech produced by adults who stutter and typically-speaking adults without knowledge about the individuals who produced the speech. In both experiments, listeners rated speaker cognitive ability, likeability, anxiety, as well as a number of speech characteristics that included fluency, naturalness, intelligibility, the likelihood the speaker had a speech-and-language disorder (Experiment 1 only), rate and volume (both Experiments 1 and 2). The speech of adults who stutter was perceived to be less fluent, natural, intelligible, and to be slower and louder than the speech of typical adults. Adults who stutter were also perceived to have lower cognitive ability, to be less likeable and to be more anxious than the typical adult speakers. Relations between speech characteristics and social and cognitive impressions were found, independent of whether or not the speaker stuttered (i.e., they were found for both adults who stutter and typically-speaking adults) and did not depend on being cued that some of the speakers may have had a speech-language impairment.

Highlights

Stuttering is a speech disorder characterized by disfluent speech patterns, including irregular timing of phonemes (Di Simoni, 1974), repetitions of syllables or words, as well as frequent hesitations or pauses (Bloodstein, 1960)
While there is some evidence that previous experience with individuals who stutter reduces negative social impressions (Betz et al, 2008), others have demonstrated that biases even persist among people who are knowledgeable about stuttering, such as students in a speech and language pathology program
To be classified as stuttering, the speaker had to exhibit greater than 3% stuttering like disfluencies (SLD) per 100 syllables and score at least “very mild” according to the total score on the Stuttering Severity Instrument (SSI-4) (Riley and Bakker, 2009)

Summary

Introduction

Stuttering is a speech disorder characterized by disfluent speech patterns, including irregular timing of phonemes (Di Simoni, 1974), repetitions of syllables or words, as well as frequent hesitations or pauses (Bloodstein, 1960). People who stutter are judged to be more submissive, tense, and insecure than their fluent speaking peers (Woods and Williams, 1976; Woods, 1978), as well as more guarded and nervous (Doody et al, 1993) These negative social impressions are widespread, occurring across cultures (Bebout and Arthur, 1992; Al-Khaledi et al, 2009; Abdalla and St. Louis, 2012; Przepiorka et al, 2013), and affect children (Betz et al, 2008; Langevin et al, 2009; Pachigar et al, 2011), adolescents (Blood and Blood, 2004), and adults (Hurst and Cooper, 1983).

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