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Stammering Research. Vol. 1.
Commentary on "Involvement of social factors in stuttering:
A review and assessment of current methodology"
By A. Furnham and S. Davis
Martine Vanryckeghem
Department of Communicative Disorders, University of Central Florida,
Orlando, FL 32816, USA
martinev@mail.ucf.edu
Furnham and Davis (2004) should be commended for their thorough overview of the methods and
findings that relate to the role of affective and social factors in the assessment of children and adults
who stutter. I wish to comment on two issues discussed in their fine article. One relates to the
assessment of the speech-associated attitude of children and adults who stutter and the other on their
emotional reaction to particular speech situations.
In the section on preschoolers and school-age children, the authors mention that the Communication
Attitude Test (Brutten, 1984; Brutten & Vanryckeghem, 2003a) has been shown to be a reliable and
valid test for assessing the speech-associated beliefs of children. Indeed, research with the
Communication Attitude Test (CAT), which has been translated into more than 10 languages has
consistently shown that the speech-associated attitude of children who stutter is significantly more
negative than that of their nonstuttering peers. Moreover, the extent of this difference, which was
found to be present at the age of six (Vanryckeghem & Brutten, 1997), suggested that the betweengroup
difference might be present at an even earlier time period, one closer to the time at which
stuttering has its onset. This highlighted the need for early detection of mal-attitude toward speech.
Indeed, as Furnham and Davis (2004) have pointed out "An instrument capable of determining the
communication attitudes of children close to stuttering onset would be useful in several areas" (p.115).
In this regard, as Davis and Furnham (2004) have already mentioned in their "authors' response to
commentaries", a preschool-kindergarten version of the CAT has recently been designed. Research
with this self-report test, the KiddyCAT, (Vanryckeghem & Brutten, 2002, 2004; Vanryckeghem,
Hernandez & Brutten, 2001; Vanryckeghem, Brutten & Hernandez, 2004) has been shown to
distinguish the speech-associated attitude of normally fluent children, as young as three, from that of
youngsters who are incipient stutterers. As such, it has served to put aside Conture's (2001) concern as
to whether a "self-report questionnaire procedure could be readily and reliably administered to
preschool/early elementary school-age children (between 2 and 7), the age period when most children
actually begin to stutter" (p. 72). Indeed, research has shown the KiddyCAT to be a useful differential
diagnostic tool for use with preschoolers. The apparent utility of the KiddyCAT is currently spawning
further study of its reliability and validity.
Furnham and Davis (2004) also reported that their "preliminary searches indicate that no empirical
work has been conducted examining the anxiety levels of children who stutter when compared to fluent
controls" (p.118). Nevertheless, it should be noted that Brutten and colleagues (Bakker, 1980, 1995;
Brutten, 1973, 1981a,b, 1982; Brutten & Janssen, 1981; Ezrati-Vinacour & Levin, 2004; Hanson,
Gronhovd & Rice, 1981; Vanryckeghem, 1998, 1999; Vanryckeghem & Brutten, 1998; Vanryckeghem
& Verghese, 2004) have, over the last couple of decades, published research on the Speech Situation
Checklist (Brutten, 1965a,b; Brutten & Vanryckeghem, 2003a,b), a state test specifically designed for
use with children and adults who stutter. The Speech Situation Checklist (SSC), an internally
consistent (Brutten & Vanryckeghem, 2003a,b; Ezrati-Vinacour & Levin, 2004) self-report test
procedure, that is part of the Behavior Assessment Battery (Brutten & Vanryckeghem, 2003a,b), makes
it possible to investigate both the extent to which various speech situations evoke negative emotional
reactions and speech disruption. The results of various SSC studies (Brutten & Janssen, 1981; Brutten
& Vanryckeghem, 2003a,b; Trotter, 1982, 1983; Vanryckeghem & Verghese, 2004) have shown that
both the emotional and dysfluency scores of grade-schoolers and adults who stutter are significantly
higher than those of people who do not stutter. Notable, too, is the finding of a high and statistically
significant correlation between the negative emotional and speech disruption reports of children and
adults who stutter (.82 and .87, respectively) (Brutten & Vanryckeghem, 2003a,b). The latter points to
a meaningful link between the emotional and behavioral displays of youngsters and adults who stutter.
In addition, it should be noted that self-reports of children and adults have been shown to significantly
correlate with the extent to which stuttering has been observed to occur (Guitar, 1976; Vanryckeghem
& Brutten, 1996).
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