The influence of communication situation on self-report in people who stutter

Abstract

Self-report measures are a valuable tool in clinical intervention for people who stutter but may be inadequate for accurately capturing situational variations in dysfluency, perceived dysfluency, attitude to the situation and the relationship between these. This exploratory study describes the development of a Speaking Task Response Questionnaire (STRQ) that enabled recording of affective and cognitive responses to speaking situations at the time at which they occurred. A quasi-experimental design was used to compare the responses of participants who do (n = 7) and do not (n = 7) stutter across two telephone speaking tasks and a face-to-face speaking task. All participants rated their responses to the tasks using the STRQ. In addition, participants who stutter self-rated their fluency and percentage syllables stuttered in each of the situations was also measured. The STRQ was able to differentiate between groups of participants who do and do not stutter and between telephoning and face-to-face tasks, indicating that it has face validity. Participants who stutter rated their responses more negatively in the telephone situations than the face-to-face situation. Qualitatively, there was lack of congruence between objective and subjective fluency ratings. Clinical implications and future development of the STRQ are discussed.