The Predictable Variability of Stuttering

Question 1

Variability Within and Across Words

Answer 1

Brown's 4 Factors:
Phonetic Factors
Grammatical Class
Sentence Position
Word Length

Question 2

Phonetic Factors

Answer 2

more likely to be initial sounds and consonants

Question 3

Grammatical Class

Answer 3

more likely to occur on nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs

Question 4

Sentence position

Answer 4

more likely to occur in 1st 3 words or 1st sound/syllable

Question 5

Word length

Answer 5

more likely to occur on words that are 5+ letters long

Question 6

How could this research help with assessment and treatment?

Answer 6

• can identify subtypes of stuttering
• can manipulate treatment to assessment
• sounds that are more difficult may change in lifetime

Question 7

Variability across conditions

Answer 7

Conditions that increase stuttering:

• increasing audience size (with warning)
• authority figures (not consistent)
• grammatical factors (Brown)
• Telephone (self-reported)

Question 8

Minor conditions that decrease stuttering

Answer 8

PWS rated conditions when they stutter more or less often

• almost every condition received a 4 (no stuttering) by at least 1 PWS
• almost every condition received a rating of 1 (stutter as normal) by at least 1 PWS

Question 9

Adaptation Effect (minor condition)

Answer 9

Re-reading same short, material out loud over and over decreases stuttering by about 50% for most PWS after 5 consecutive readings
- must be same material and be read aloud

• Don’t know why it works
• May be due to speech control control/mechanisms getting used to the movements, decreased anxiety, increased demands from repetition

Question 10

Major conditions that decrease stuttering

Answer 10

Fluency inducing conditions (FICs)

Question 11

Variability across speakers

Answer 11

Is it reasonable to define subgroups/subtypes of PWS?
- need more research; not really a subgroup with 1 difference between other PWS

Are subgroups helpful?

• Yes; different treatment for different groups
• Yes; similarities between large groups can be separated into small groups for further evaluation

Question 12

Anticipation Effects

Answer 12

Anticipatory apprehensive hypertonic avoidance reaction

• stuttering is effort to avoid stuttering
• 85-90% of time PWS predicted they would stutter they were right (some say 100%)

Great variability across speakers

Question 13

Variability within and across words (Wingate)

Answer 13

Emphasize syllabic stress as a factor in stuttering

• 41-50% of 1st 3 words were stuttered
• 51% of stressed later syllables were stuttered
• 15% of unstressed later syllables were stuttered

Van Riper loci: when there’s stress, content words, difficult words in general; leads to stress; leads to more stuttering