The relationship between stuttering anticipation and verbal response time in adults who stutter

Abstract

Objectives: The anticipation of stuttering is a common experience for many people who stutter. In this study, subjective ratings of stuttering anticipation were used to investigate the consistency of anticipation across time, beliefs about how anticipation affects the likelihood of stuttering, and the relationship between anticipation and verbal response time (VRT) in the perceptually fluent speech of 12 adults who stutter (AWS).

Method: AWS used a visual analog scale to rate their beliefs about stuttering anticipation in general, and their degree of stuttering anticipation for 50 words at two separate visits that were separated by approximately 1 week. Participants performed a computer-prompted oral reading task with the same 50 words to obtain measures of VRT. Within-subject and group level correlations were used to explore relationships between stuttering anticipation, VRT, and stuttering severity.

Results: Six of the participants had word-level stuttering anticipation ratings that were significantly correlated across the two testing visits. Two participants with the highest stuttering severity showed a positive correlation between word-level stuttering anticipation and VRT. Across the group, stuttering severity was positively correlated with the belief that the anticipation of stuttering increases the likelihood of stuttering, and the consistency of word level anticipation ratings across time.

Conclusion: The results provide evidence for a relationship between stuttering severity, the consistency of anticipation, and the belief that anticipating stuttering increases the likelihood of stuttering. The relationship between anticipation and VRT in two of the most severe participants provides preliminary evidence that anticipation may be able to subtly influence the speech production system.

Keywords:

• Stuttering
• Fluency
• Anticipation
• Verbal response time

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the participants of this study for their time and effort. We would also like to thank Emma Boyd for her help with the relatiability measures.

Disclaimer statements

Contributors Richard Arenas designed, implemented, collected data and analyzed the data in this study. Richard also wrote the majority of the paper. Patricia contributed significantly to the writing and editing of the paper.

Funding The authors have no financial relationships relevant to this article to disclose.

Conflict of interest The authors have no conflicts-of-interest related to this paper.

Ethics approval The research study received ethics approval by the IRB offices at both the University of Iowa and the University of New Mexico.

ORCiD

Richard M. Arenas http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5976-314X