Ch. 6: Is Stuttering Psychological? Flashcards
Types of Psychological Theories Causes of stuttering:
Psychoemotional
emotional trauma or personality conflict
Types of Psychological Theories Causes of stuttering CONT:
Psychobehavioral
a learned behavior reinforced by environmental variables
Types of Psychological Theories Causes of stuttering CONT:
Psycholinguistic
a breakdown in the processes for generating language
Examples of Psychoemotional Theories
- Stuttering is a symptom of repressed unconscious conflicts or urges
- Stuttering is a symptom of a personality disorder or neurosis
- Stuttering is a symptom of maladjustment following a psychological trauma
What evidence would support a psychoemotional cause?
1 )Onsets coincide with traumatic events
2) Sudden onsets far more frequent than gradual onsets
3) Recovery coincide with improved emotional adjustment
4) Onset age evenly distributed across the lifespan
Note: none of these are supported facts
Adult Personality and Stuttering
- Inconsistent findings across studies
- Personality characteristics of PWS likely reflecting the impact of stuttering, not its cause
- Trait anxiety may be a contributing predisposing factor (but not, by itself, a cause)
Examples of Psychobehavioral Theories Stuttering is acquired :
- by a child who tries to avoid unacceptable speech behavior
- when a child has learned to be anxious and tense about speaking
- after environmental stimuli have reinforced the behavior
- when environmental demands exceed the speaker’s capacities for fluent speech
Diagnosogenic Theory (Johnson)
- Diagnosogenic: the diagnosis causes the problem
- Stuttering occurs when a speaker tries to avoid NORMALLY disfluent speech events
- Parents disapprove and show concern over disfluency, and then the child struggles to avoid it
Negating Johnson’s Theory
- Notable differences do exist in the speech of CWS. Parents are not reacting to normal disfluency
- Improvement occurs in some cases despite calling attention to stuttering
- Stuttering improves when aversive stimuli (e.g., electric shock) were the consequence of stuttering
REVIEW OF Classical Conditioning:
If a neutral stimulus (bell) is paired with a naturally-occurring stimulus (food) it can develop the power to trigger the same response (saliva)
Example: Pavlov’s dog salivates when a bell rings
REVIEW OF Operant Conditioning:
The consequence (food) of a response (standing) can change the response frequency.
Example: When the rat stands up, food is delivered. Because the behavior was positively reinforced, the rat stands up more times.
Two-Factor Theory (Brutten & Shoemaker, 1967)
- Stuttering results from conditioned negative emotion
- Two factors, classical and operant conditioning play a role
- Factor I: various cues evoke feelings that disrupt speech movements
- Factor 2: secondary behaviors are reinforced because they deter stuttering
Anticipatory-Struggle Hypothesis (Bloodstein, 1997)
- A child struggles to speak and finds it difficult
- Frustration and repeated failure lead to a belief that talking is hard to do
- Believing speech is difficult, the child adds undue tension to the act
- Talking triggers the anticipation of stuttering and struggle (tension) reactions.
Demands-Capacities Model (Starkweather & Gottwald, 1990)
Stutter events arise when various demands exceed the speaker’s capacities for fluent speech. For example, a child attempts speech performance beyond his/her abilities.
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Demands-Capacities Model (Starkweather & Gottwald, 1990)
- Capacities vs. demands differ across children (cognitive, linguistic, motor, etc.)
- A child may have no deficits, but demands still exceed capacities
- An advanced capacity may be a demand For example: new vocabulary knowledge (demand) may exceed oral motor abilities (capacity) for producing the words
