Listener preferences for stuttered and syllable-timed speech production

The purpose of this study was to determine how “naive” listeners react to syllable-timed speech production. Three stutterers were videotape recorded while speaking in their usual manner and pacing their speech at 100 words per minute (wpm) and 70 wpm. Twenty-three listeners rated the speech samples as to which they preferred to hear. The results indicated generally that listeners preferred paced speech to stuttering.     

Paralinguistic aspects of auditory comprehension in aphasia.

Eight severe aphasics were given sentences with either emotional or neutral content, presented once directly by the examiner and once via a tape recorder. Sentences with emotional content produced a greater number of responses than their neutral counterparts. Sentences spoken by the examiner also produced a significantly greater number of responses than the same items originating from a tape recorder. These results confirm the view that elements not related to the linguistic aspects of a message (and therefore referred to as paralinguistic) play a significant role in auditory comprehension.     

Phonation in stuttering: A review of current research

Current research including studies which implicate the phonatory mechanism in stuttering as well as physiological studies offering direct evidence of abnormal laryngeal activity in stuttering are reviewed. It is concluded that while present research does not support claims for laryngeal causation of stuttering, the evidence is strong that abnormal laryngeal behaviors are an important aspect of the disrupted peripheral speech physiology that characterizes stuttering. Since this is true, it follows that abnormal laryngeal behavior deserves consideration in the diagnosis and management of stuttering.     

Relationship of age,sex, and educational groups to career decisiveness

Five educational groups, composed of a total of 369 students, ranging from high school freshmen to college juniors, were administered the Career Decision Questionnaire, a scale designed to measure antecedents of educational-vocational indecision. It was determined that age was an extremely important factor in career decidedness, sex was not an important variable in determining decidedness, and certain educational groups stood out as significant factors associated with level of career decisiveness. Students enrolled in career orientation classes were clearly more undecided than students enrolled in 12th-grade vocational classes, college preprofessional classes, and more general groups of high school students. Interaction among variables and the measurement of career decidedness are discussed, with applications for counseling considered.     

Perceptual study of the speech of “successfully therapeutized” stutterers

The purpose of this investigation was to determine if the fluent speech of “successfully therapeutized” stutterers and a group of partially treated stutterers was perceptually different from the fluent speech of normal speaking subjects. Tape recorded speech samples of treated stutterers were obtained from leading exponents of (1) Van Riperian, (2) metronome-conditioned speech retraining, (3) delayed auditory feedback, (4) operant conditioning, (5) precision fluency shaping, and (6) “holistic” therapy programs. All forms of disfluency were edited out of these tapes. The remaining samples were then paired with matched fluent samples of normal talkers and presented to a group of 20 sophisticated judges. The judges were instructed to select from each paired speech sample presented to them the one produced by the stuttering subject. The results of the analyses of variance for correct identification of the stutterers showed that the partially treated stutterers, as well as each group of therapeutized stutterers, were identified at levels significantly above chance. This meant that the fluent speech of the partially and successfully treated stutterers was perceptibly different from the utterances of the normal speakers sampled. In addition, the analyses of variance also revealed that all stuttering groups had a significant severity factor. This finding indicated there was a significant difference between the severity subgroup in all the samples investigated. These results were discussed in terms of their clinical implications.     

Dimensions of stuttering and relationship to psychopathology

This article reports two studies. The first attempted to define stable dimensions within the Stuttering Severity (SS) scale. A factor analysis of correlations among its 64 items defined four factor-based subscales, and three additional subscales were developed rationally. Relationships among these seven subscales suggested the existence of two major dimensions. The second study investigated the relationship of the seven subscales to psychopathology. Correlations were obtained among the subscales and MMPI scales for 69 subjects, and were subjected to a second factor analysis. The MMPI scales and the SS subscales clearly loaded on separate factors, indicating little relationship between dimensions of stuttering and psychopathology as defined by MMPI scores. The second analysis also supported the previous identification of two general dimensions for stuttering. Items were selected for two final scales to represent these dimensions, labeled behavior (22 items) and sensitivity (20 items). Norms were developed for them and also for the full 64-item SS scale.     

What's in a face: Individual differences in face perception

White and black females judged the similarity of all pairs of white and black male faces. An individual difference multidimensional scaling analysis of the similarity judgments indicated that most of the dimensions underlying the perceptions of male faces involved affective (honest, tense, attractive) characteristics rather than simple physical features (eye width, mouth height). The major physical dimension was face shape (long vs. wide). The dimensions were similar for black and white subjects. An individual difference hypothesis that we pay attention to those characteristics that we possess was partially confirmed.