The Effect of Pre-Information on Naive Listeners' Perceptual Judgements of Post Treatment Stutterers

Abstract

The present study replicated a previous investigation which found that naive listeners could differentiate stutterers who had completed a ‘Prolonged Speech Programme’ from normal speakers. The present study provided a group of listeners with information about prolonged speech and compared their performance in differentiating stutterers from normal speakers to the performance of a group of naive listeners. The results indicated that, as a group, the listeners with information performed better than the naive listeners on the speaker differentiation task. Observations noted by both groups of listeners indicated that features of prolonged speech were detected in the speech of the stutterers. Other features, not related to those instigated in the therapy programme, were also noted and there was some indication that these may not have been exclusive to the speech of the stutterers.