A Study of the Relationship Between the Social Complexity of the Oral Reading Situation and the Severity of Stuttering

Why does the speech of stutterers improve in chorus reading?

“…But we may question whether stutterers do actually speak so very perfectly when alone. Hahn (7) has shown that the majority of stutterers do have difficulty when speaking alone. While he found some who spoke almost perfectly when alone, his subjects had, on the average, about half as many blocks when alone as they had when speaking to another person.…”

“…The reading material was that used by Professor Eugene Hahn in one of his experiments (7). We are grateful to him for permission to use this ingeniously constructed material, which consists of four selections of 550 words each.…”

Positional effects in the stuttering of contextually organized verbal material.

“…The value of that theoretical approach is to be seen in the body of evidence which pertains to the avoidance gradient of that model. Clinical observations, introspective reports of stutterers, and experimental studies (Hahn, 1940;Porter, 1939;Van Riper, 1937) have indicated that the frequency of stuttering is in direct proportion to the stutterer's desire to avoid it. Bloodstein (1949) provides evidence that stuttering frequency is greatest under conditions of increased communicative responsibility.…”

Stuttering behavior and anxiety as a function of the duration of stimulus words.

“…Although quantitative relationships have not been reported, clinical and/or observational protocol (14,18,40,58) suggest that early parental training practices and attitudes are among the antecedent conditions which influence the acquisition and retention of stuttering behavior. In addition, the frequency of stuttering appears to be related to classes of stimulus variables such as characteristics of the word materials (n, 12, 13, J 9> 34' 35' 37> 3$> 4 2 ) an ^ of tne speech situation (4,7,8,27,47,54,60,63), threat of punishment (70), alteration of speech patterns and/or accompanying behavior (5,7,8,39,41), practice conditions (27,41,54,60), and suggestion (7) ? However, while present in all speech situations, the influence of the 1 This article is based on a thesis submitted to the faculty of the Department of Psychology of the State University of Iowa in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the M.A.…”