ENDURING WITHOUT AVOIDING - PAUSES AND VERBAL DYSFLUENCIES IN PUBLIC SPEAKING FEAR

Direct measures of overt behavior have been underutilized in speech an d other social fear, anxiety, and phobia research. This study demonstr ates the usefulness of such variables in the evaluation of public spea king fear: A molecular behavioral assessment methodology was used to e xamine pauses and verbal dysfluencies of individuals with circumscribe d speech fear (n = 8) or general social anxiety (n = 8), as well as no nanxious control participants (n = 16), during an impromptu speech beh avior test. Speech fear and generally social anxious individuals pause d more often and for a longer duration than the nonanxious group. Resu lts also indicated greater increases in state anxiety during the speec h in the circumscribed speech fear sample, relative to the generalized social anxiety and control groups. Taken together with other research , these findings provide evidence that circumscribed speech fear is a meaningful subtype and can be independent of generalized social anxiet y The utility of measuring pausing and verbal dysfluencies in the beha vioral assessment of speech fear and other social anxiety and phobia i s discussed.