Severity-Coded Self-Disclosure Cues and Adult Listener Perceptions of an Adolescent Who Stutters: An Exploratory...

Area of Science:

• Speech-language pathology
• Social psychology
• Communication studies

Background:

• Factual self-disclosure of stuttering is linked to better listener perceptions.
• The impact of overt stuttering during disclosure on adolescent speaker judgments is not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how factual self-disclosure cues, varying in stuttering severity, affect adult listeners' perceptions of an adolescent male who stutters.
• To determine if the overt stuttering heard during disclosure influences subsequent judgments of speech skills and personality characteristics.

Main Methods:

• A nonrandomized between-groups video-vignette study involving 778 adults.
• Participants viewed a 17-year-old male who stutters with no disclosure or after mild, moderate, or severe overt stuttering disclosure cues.
• Ratings of speech skills and personality characteristics were analyzed using ANCOVAs and cumulative-logit ordinal models.

Main Results:

• All disclosure conditions led to more favorable listener ratings of intelligibility, fluency, and ease of listening compared to no disclosure.
• Disclosure conditions also resulted in lower perceived speech handicap and more positive personality ratings (relaxed, confident, outgoing, competent).
• The initial observation that mild and severe cues were superior to moderate cues was not statistically significant after adjustments.

Conclusions:

• Factual self-disclosure, regardless of overt stuttering severity in the cue, enhances adult listener perceptions of adolescent speakers who stutter.
• Findings support self-disclosure as a valuable self-advocacy tool for adolescents who stutter.
• Further research is recommended to explore listener responses based on disclosure severity, speech sample severity, and their congruence.