STUTTERING AND COMMUNICATIVE SUITABILITY OF SPEECH

The purpose of the present study was to develop and evaluate an instru ment for assessing the communicative suitability of speech (i.e., the speaking situation-dependent adequacy of speech as judged by listeners ). Listeners judged the suitability of speech of people who stutter (N = 10) at three stages of treatment (before, immediately after, and 6 months after) and that of people who do not stutter (N = 10, the latte r serving as a reference). The listeners rated the suitability of the speech, using a 10-point scale, for 10 speaking situations that suppos edly make different demands, with listeners consisting of three groups : unsophisticated listeners (N = 17), clinicians specializing in the t reatment of stuttering (N = 17), and stuttering listeners (N = 17). Re sults indicate that the rating instrument can be scored reliably. Anal ysis of variance for the ratings of the reference speakers showed that the factor ''situation'' had a significant effect on the suitability ratings, with more demanding situations receiving lower suitability sc ores than the less demanding ones. Also, the speech of the people who stutter was judged significantly less suitable than the speech of the reference speakers. Furthermore, unsophisticated listeners were consid erably less tolerant in their judgments than clinicians and stuttering listeners. Findings suggest that communicative suitability is a promi sing criterion to further investigate, especially as ii may apply to t he objective evaluation of treatment outcome for stuttering.