Relationship between temperament and stuttering severity in Persian speaking subjects with advanced stuttering

Background and Although traditional medicine started from thousands years ago, its application in treatment of different diseases is the focus of many current studies. Stuttering is a complex speech disorder and imposes significant negative influences on person's psychological life and on his or relationship with others. The study aimed to investigate the relationship between temperament type and stuttering severity in Persian speaking subjects with advanced stuttering. 40 subjects with advanced stuttering and 40 sex and age matched subjects with fluent speech participated in this cross-sectional descriptive analytical study. Temperament type and stuttering severity were assessed by “Determining Temperament Type Questionnaire” and stuttering severity instrument-3 respectively. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS version 18. Independent t test and Pearson correlation were used to examine the relationship among variables. Mean temperament score was higher in subjects with fluent speech than in those with stuttering but this was not statistically significant (p = 0.09). Significant correlation was observed between mean temperament score and mean stuttering severity (p = 0.04) and this correlation was negative. Indeed, the more the score of a subject in temperament test (as the temperament being warmer), the less is his/her stuttering severity. findings of this study showed that stuttering severity is decreased the as the temperament being warmer. It is suggested that people with stuttering moderate their temperament by use of warm foods and reduce the use of cold foods.