Ch 6

Question 1

Types of psychological theories (causes of stuttering)

Answer 1

Psycho emotional - emotional trauma or personality conflict
Psycho behavioral - a learned behavior reinforced by environmental variables
Psycholinguistic - a breakdown in the processes for generating language

Question 2

Examples of psychoemotional theories

Answer 2

A symptom of unconscious conflicts or urges

A symptom of a personality disorder or neurosis

A symptom of maladjustment following a psychological trauma

Question 3

What evidence would support a psychological cause?

Answer 3

1. Onsets with traumatic events
2. Sudden onsets far more frequent than gradual onsets
3. Onset age evenly distributed across the lifespan
4. Recovery coincide with improved emotional adjustment

Question 4

Personality characteristics of PWS likely reflect….. not….

Answer 4

the impact of stuttering not its cause

Question 5

Trait anxiety may be a contributing …

Answer 5

predisposing factor (not by itself, a cause)

Question 6

Psychobehavioral theories

Answer 6

By a child who tries to avoid unacceptable speech behavior
-when a child has learned to be anxious and tense about speaking
-after the environmental stimuli have reinforced the behavior
-when environmental demands exceed the speaker’s capabilities for fluent speech

Question 7

Diagnosogenic theory (Johnson)

Answer 7

The diagnosis is the cause of the problem

Stuttering occurs when a speaker tries to avoid normal disfluencies

Parents disapprove; show concern over disfluency. Child struggles to avoid it

Question 8

Negating Johnson’s theory

Answer 8

Notable differences exist in the speech of cws

Stuttering improves when aversive stimuli e.g. electric shock, were the consequence of stuttering

Question 9

What stuttering may feel like?

Answer 9

Intermittently losing balance while walking a tightrope in the circus

Being unable to insert key to unlock or start the car when upset or in a hurry

In both conditions, skills disintegrate as a function of anxiety and reduced attention to the complex motor task

Question 10

Two-factor theory (Brutten & shoemaker)

Answer 10

Stuttering results from conditional negative emotion

2 factors: classical and operant

Question 11

Factor 1 classical

Answer 11

Various cues evoke feelings that disrupt speech movements

Question 12

Factor 2: operant

Answer 12

Secondary behaviors are reinforced because they deter stuttering

Question 13

Anticipatory l-struggle hypothesis
(Bloodstein)

Answer 13

1. A child struggles to speak and finds it difficult
2. Frustration and repeated failure lead to a belief that talking is hard to do
3. Believing speech is difficult, the child adds undue tension to the act
4. Talking triggers the anticipation of stuttering and struggle (tension)

Question 14

Demands-capacities model
(Starkwrather & gottwald)

Answer 14

Stutter events arise when various demands exceed the speaker’s capacities for fluent speech

Demands can be an advanced capacity like new vocabulary (exceed oral motor abilities for producing the words)

Question 15

Psycholinguistic theories
Stuttering results from ….

Answer 15

An effort to correct a speech planning error before it surfaces (covert repair hypothesis)

A defect in central processes reponsible for uniting sound elements into syllables

Mistimed arrival of either the sound fillers or the syllable frames essential to execution of speech

Question 16

Psycholinguistic processed underlying speech

Answer 16

1. Conceptualization
2. Formulation (grammatical/ phonological)
3. Articulation