Relationship of disturbances and hesitations in spontaneous speech to anxiety.

Abstract

Past work has indicated that flustered or confused speech can be classed into several distinct speech disturbance categories. Such disturbances, occurring frequently in everyday conversation, have no conventional semantic function.In the present study, 25 experimental and 20 control male Ss were used. Anxiety was manipulated in an interview setting. Under anxiety, the frequency of all speech disturbances, except the familiar "ah," showed a sizable increase. The frequency of ah's increased strikingly in a change from normal to a telephonelike conversation. Such change did not affect the other disturbances. Measurement of palmar sweat revealed modest positive association with the speech disturbances. Exploration of the relationship of the Taylor Manifest Anxiety scale to the disturbances suggested that the ah is functionally distinct from the other speech disturbances.

Explainers as an Indicator of Defensive Attitude to Experienced Anxiety in Young Women Differing in Their Styles of Coping with Threatening Stimuli

“…Mahl (1987b), on the other hand, devoted much attention to pauses, disruptions, and "small" parts of speech such as pronouns, conjunctions, and particles, which in his opinion occur in utterances more often if a speaker is experiencing anxiety. He examined the utterances of patients during psychotherapy (Mahl, 1956), the language of children regarded as anxious (Zimbardo, Mahl, & Barnard, 1963), and the spontaneous speech of healthy individuals in situations arousing anxiety (Kasl & Mahl, 1965;Mahl, 1987a). He stated that the proportion of the number of disruptions to the overall number of uttered words is positively correlated with anxiety.…”

On being sad and mistaken: Mood effects on the accuracy of thin-slice judgments.

“…The observed relationship between depression and relative insensitivity to the emotional component of vocal cues may be causally related to the association between depression and poor relationship quality (for a review, see Segrin & Abramson, 1994). The voice conveys a range of emotions, from nervousness and anxiety (Harrigan, Harrigan, Sale, & Rosenthal, 1996;Harrigan, Larson, & Pflum, 1994;Kasl & Mahl, 1965;Mahl, 1956) to depression (Pope, Blass, Siegman, & Raher, 1970) and anger (Scherer, 1981). In attempting to understand others, depressed individuals may be at a particular disadvantage because they have difficulty inferring the affective component of what is being said.…”

Interview Expectancies: Awareness of potential biases influences behaviour in interviewees

“…In the present study, it is possible that since the levels of nervousness and cognitive load were not extremely high, some behaviours for both increased mental load and nervousness were observable. For example, the control Targets reported more symptoms of nervousness after the interview, and they also exhibited more laughter during the informationgathering phase of the interview (Kasl & Mahl, 1965). Because the Targets who laughed were not conveying humorous information, we determined that this laughter was used to relieve tension and appear non-threatening (Nelson, 2008).…”