Characteristics associated with social anxiety in adults with developmental stuttering: A review.

People who stutter are at a greater risk for developing symptoms of social anxiety, with up to 22-60% of adults who stutter meeting the criteria for a clinical diagnosis. Negative attitudes and feelings about speaking and stuttering are reported to emerge as early as the preschool years and are suspected to be due to exposure to negative listener reactions, stereotyping and social isolation. Repeated negative experiences lead to feelings of fear, embarrassment and loss of control during speaking which over time, leads to the development of more severe difficulties with speaking and an overall apprehension to speak as they perceive themselves as an incompetent communicator.

Influences of Attentional Focus on Across- and Within-Sentence Variability in Adults Who Do and Do Not Stutter.

Purpose: Research has found an advantage to maintaining an external attentional focus while speaking as an increase in accuracy and a decrease in across-sentence variability has been found when producing oral-motor and speech tasks. What is not clear is how attention affects articulatory variability both and sentences, or how attention affects articulatory control in speakers who stutter. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of an internal versus external attention focus on articulatory variability at the sentence level.

Speech Elicitation Methods for Measuring Articulatory Control.

Purpose: Spatiotemporal index (STI) is a common measure of articulatory variability used to examine speech-motor control. However, the methods used to elicit productions for measuring STI have varied across studies. The aim of this study was to determine whether STI values are affected by changes in elicitation methods.

The effects of attentional focus on speech motor control in adults who stutter with and without social evaluative threat.

Purpose: We sought to investigate the effects of cued attentional shifts on speechmotor control in adults who stutter (AWS) and adults who do not stutter (ANS) when speaking under low and high social stress conditions.

Method: Thirteen AWS' and 10 ANS' lip aperture (LA) and posterior tongue (PT) movements were assessed under a Cued-Internal and Cued-External attentional focus condition with and without social stress induction (i.e.

Resting autonomic activity in adults who stutter and its association with self-reports of social anxiety.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate resting autonomic activity in adults who stutter (AWS) compared to adults who do not stutter (ANS) and the relationship this has on self-reports of social anxiety.

Methods: Thirteen AWS and 15 ANS completed the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS; Mattick & Clark, 1998) and Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation (BFNE; Leary, 1983). Following this, measures of skin conductance levels (i.