An objective study of the relationship between psychological factors and the severity of stuttering.

Abstract

The findings here reported indicate that stutterers experience a measurably greater amount of stuttering in some types of speech situations than in others, and that they experience relatively more difficulty in situations in which the audience is relatively large and consists to a high degree of persons with whom they are unacquainted. The findings also suggest that changes in the following subjective factors may be significantly related to changes in severity of stuttering: (1) general emotionality; (2) desire to keep from stuttering; (3) embarrassment; (4) awareness of real or imagined embarrassment on the part of the audience; and (5) effort and muscular strain. It is necessary to distinguish between the instability of the stutterer's speech mechanism which is due to fundamental constitutional factors and that which is due to superimposed and transitory emotional and psychological factors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)