Study of Social Anxiety Components in People who stutter

Stuttering is a motor speech disorder which is recognized by some signs such as repeating words and syllables, prolongation some phonemes and/or locking organs of speech while pronouncing some phonemes. People with stuttering seem to suffer some levels of social anxiety or social phobia and this may affect their quality of life. Therefore, recognizing this problem especially in people who stutter is very important. This paper aims to study several components of social anxiety test including fear, social avoidance behavior and physiological problems in 18 to 45 years people who stutter.
Using Conver social anxiety test, this cross-sectional analytic study compared social anxiety in 32 individuals with stuttering (age range: 18 to 45 years) and 32 age- and gender-matched subjects with fluent speech.
Independent t-test showed that average social anxiety score in people who stutter is statistically more than people with fluent speech. Moreover, among components of this test, mean score of fear was statistically different between two groups.
Results of this study showed higher rate of social anxiety, and particularly component of fear specially, in stuttered people compared to individuals without stuttering. So, it is necessary to consider this aspect of disorder in therapy programs performed by speech and language pathologists for the patients; and to denote a part of therapy programs to adjust and decrease rate of people's social anxiety, especially their fear-feeling in them.