Communication Attitude in Stuttering Students in Babol City

Among the theoretical approaches to stuttering, there is a general agreement that developmental stuttering is attributed to several factors related to speech, including emotional regulation. Accordingly, different theorists point to the importance of the role of negative attitudes toward speech and speech abilities in the onset, occurrence, and developmet of stuttering. Considering that the culture of a group can influence the attitude to speech, the purpose of the present study was to investigate the communicative attitude of 8-15 year-old students who stutter (SWS) in Babol city and studying the effect of age and sex on their attitude scores.

The current descriptive-analytical and cross-sectional study was performed on 261 individuals. The participants were students with stuttering who were selected via multi-stage sampling from among students in Babol city. First, the teachers introduced SWS and then their nonfluency frequency analysis was carried out. After comfirmation of stutter detection, communicative attitudes test (CAT) was performed on each participant and the attitude score of each person was obtained.

The mean of attitude score of SWS girls and boys were 22.5±7.46 and 22.71±7.98, respectively. Attitude score of SWS had no significant difference between the two sexes and between eight age groups (p>0.05). Regarding the simultaneous effect of these two variables on attitude scores, there was a significant difference in the attitude score of male and female students in each eight age group (p=0.03).

According to the results, although the mean score of attitude score in SWS is in the middle class, attention to the aspect of communicative attitude in assessing, treatming, and planning of SWS, especially in 12-year-old students, is important and necessary.