Comparison of Stuttering Severity and Anxiety During Standard and Challenge Phone Calls

The experience of stuttering in everyday life among adults who stutter: The impact of trait social anxiety and the social situations

PURPOSE

The purpose of this study was to investigate the emotional and stuttering experience of adults who stutter (AWS) in everyday life, and how that experience may be shaped by personal (i.e., trait social anxiety) and situational factors (i.e., social partner reaction, communication channel type, social closeness, stuttering knowledge).

METHOD

AWS completed ecological momentary assessments on their smartphones multiple times a day for up to three weeks. Data (n = 62) were analyzed with multilevel models to determine how situational factors and trait social anxiety influence the Negative Affect (NA), Positive Affect (PA), and self-reported stuttering severity of AWS.

RESULTS

Results indicated that having high (vs. low) trait social anxiety was associated with a tendency to experience high NA, low PA, and high self-reported stuttering severity among AWS. A range of situational factors significantly influenced the within-person variation of NA, PA, and self-reported stuttering severity in everyday life. In addition, interacting with distant social partners relative to being alone heightened NA, and the effect was more prominent among AWS with high (vs. low) trait social anxiety.

CONCLUSIONS

Overall, the findings suggest that the variation of affects and stuttering severity among AWS can be partly accounted for by factors from both the situational and personal levels. Clinicians should be aware of the low PA experienced by AWS who have high (vs low) trait social anxiety in everyday life.

Associations between social anxiety, physiological reactivity, and speech disfluencies in autistic young adults and controls

INTRODUCTION

The aim of this study was to examine possible associations of social anxiety (SA) and speaking-related physiological reactivity with the frequencies of a) total disfluencies, b) typical disfluencies, and c) stuttering-like disfluencies, as well as d) stuttering-severity in autistic young adults and controls.

METHODS

Thirty-two autistic young adults and 35 controls participated in this study. Participants were presented with video clips (viewing condition) and were then asked to talk about the videos (narrating condition). SA was measured by the self-report Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory (SPAI). Speaking-related physiological reactivity was measured by the electrodermal activity (EDA), an index of emotional arousal. The speech samples from the narrating condition were analyzed for type and frequency of speech disfluencies and used for determining the stuttering severity. SA and speaking-related physiological reactivity were compared between the groups. Correlation between SA, physiological reactivity, disfluency frequencies, and stuttering severity were tested separately for both groups.

RESULTS

No between-group differences were found in the overall SA, yet differences were found in SPAI subscales of social interaction, group interaction, and avoidance, as well as in agoraphobia. Both groups had higher physiological arousal in narrating condition in comparison to the video viewing condition, yet there was no between-group difference in the reactivity. No associations were found between SPAI measures, physiological reactivity, disfluency frequencies, and stuttering severity in the autistic group. In the control group, a negative association was found between physiological reactivity and total and typical disfluency frequencies.

CONCLUSIONS

SA or speaking-related physiological reactivity were not associated with disfluency frequencies or stuttering severity in autistic persons. Negative association between physiological reactivity and disfluency frequencies found in the control group may indicate that the physiological arousal may impact the speech production process by reducing the overt disfluencies.

Contemporary Theories of Stuttering Development

The article presents a theoretical analysis of contemporary models of persistent stuttering development in children and adults at the current period of development of science. The accumulated amount of scientific knowledge suggests that stuttering has a neurological basis: it is associated with disorders in the structure and function of the brain. On this basis, there have been emerged models of stuttering that link the cause of a speech disorder with an unstable speech motor system. Theories and models of stuttering based on cognitive and language processing are likely to be useful in that they have explanatory power in relation to the mechanisms that play an important role in the production of key symptoms of stuttering. Considering that stuttering is a complex disorder, the logical result of this was the proposal of multifactorial models of impaired speech fluency. The presented overview may be useful to psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, speech therapists, teachers, and practitioners interacting with children and adults with stuttering and other speech fluency disorders.