<p> The purpose of this study was to explore how listeners perceived adults who use speech modification techniques for stuttering and how these techniques affect listener comfort. Eighty-nine university undergraduate students completed Likert-type scales and answered descriptive questions to rated four audio samples presenting stuttered speech, prolonged speech, speech with pull-outs, and speech with preparatory-sets.</p><p> The results of the scales reveled that listeners perceived the use of preparatory-sets to be a significantly more natural and less handicapping form of speech than the other experimental conditions. No significant differences were found in personality judgments of the speaker. However, all four conditions were rated to have an overwhelmingly negative impression, which was primarily described with negative communication and personality attributes.</p><p> Listener comfort was significant more positive in the preparatory-set condition than the other conditions and in the stuttered speech condition compared to the prolonged speech condition. Most participants reported that listener comfort was influenced by the negative speech attributes of each condition, which varied across conditions. The participants were significantly less willing to socially interact with the speakers using prolonged speech. </p><p> The results of this investigation supported the use of preparatory-sets to increase perceived speech naturalness, listener comfort, and to decrease perceived handicap. The use of prolonged speech at reduced speech rates should be used with caution as it can lead to increased negative socially interaction and listener comfort. However, all the speech conditions were rated more negatively than the norms for fluent speech. Therefore, counseling and desensitization techniques should be incorporated in interventions for stuttering.</p><p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PROQUEST/oai:pqdtoai.proquest.com:10266951 |
| Date | 27 September 2017 |
| Creators | De Nardo, Thales |
| Publisher | University of Louisiana at Lafayette |
| Source Sets | ProQuest.com |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis |
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