BC, Canada Mary Rose L.

On Friday, I mentioned I could summarize an article for the Canadian Stuttering Association website. I'm thankful to God that I was able to decipher the key points from all the jargon. I just sent if off for the rest of the boards review. Here's the summary.

Personality and Stuttering 

Summarized by Mary Rose L.

The Correlational Study:

The study examined the relationship of the 5 factor Model of Personality - specifically Neuroticism, Extraversion and its impact on the stutterer's quality of life. 

The researcher hypothesized that higher Neuroticism scores would correlate with higher scores in OASES (Overall  Assessment of the Speakers Experience of  Stuttering)  which indicate greater negative effects - anxiety, shame and avoidance.  However, if stutterers had higher Extraversion scores, then they may deal with life stressors in a direct way via seeking support from others.

Materials and Method:

The 5 factor Model of Personality is comprised of Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Concientiousness and Aggreeableness.  Neuroticism is defined as being moody, emotional, unstable and anxious. It is also linked to the experience of negative emotionality and impaired coping with daily stressors ( Costa & McCrae, 1992).  Extraversion is defined as being outgoing and social.  Due to previous  literature on Openness, Concientiousness and Agreeableness, the researcher decided not to study these variables  (Bleeka, Reutera, Yaruss, Cook, Fabere, Christian & Montaga, 2012).

Participants - 112 German people who stutter (PWS). They were recruited from a Self Help Support Group for Stutterers. Each participants met the required criterias 1) they were over 18 years  of age; 2) they had a developmental stutter before 10 years of age; and  3) their stutter was confirmed by a Speech Language Pathologist. 

Questionnaire - participants completed a 100 item self report that measured  the pychosocial effects of a stutterers everyday life called OASES (Overall Assessment of the Speakers Experience of Stuttering) .  

Results: The research findings supported the hypothesis of a relationship with Neuroticism and OASES scores. A person with a higher level of Neuroticism exhibited a higher score in OASES. This reflected an adverse experience due to their speech disorder. For this reason, it is important for clinicians and researchers to consider these negative psychosocial consequences in the assessment of individuals who stutter. For PWS, there was a negative correlation in extraversion which suggest that  stutterers are less outgoing and experience greater adverse impacts resulting from their stuttering or vice versa. Only 4 % of stutterers were found to be extraverted and this explained the variation in the neuroticism results (Bleeka, et al., 2012).

Discussion: It is likely that persons with high neuroticism will benefit from emotion regulation strategies in the context of coping. However, future studies are needed to investigate the link between Neuroticsim and speech therapy. Due to the correlational nature of the present study it is not possible to derive a causal relationship between Neuroticism and the stuttering impact on quality of life (Bleeka, et al., 2012).

References:

Bleeka, B. , Reutera, M., Yaruss J.S., Cook, S., Fabere, J., & Montaga, C. (2012). Relationship between personality characteristics of people who stutter and the impact of stuttering on everyday life. Journal of Fluency Disorder,  37, 325 - 333.

Costa, P.T.,  & McCrae, R.R. (1992). Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R) and NEO Five - Factor Inventory (FFI): Professional manual. Odessa. Psychological Assessment Resources.

USA: Nina G. Comedian

 
 Nina was diagnosed with a Learning Disability and began to stutter while in elementary school. She struggled to deal with teachers who underestimated her abilities, teasing from peers and family members, and issues of self-esteem. Nina was raised in the Oakland area and attended UC Berkeley where the roots of the Disability Movement took place, solidifying her identity as a person with a disability, one she sees with cultural and political empowerment. This coupled with supportive parents has helped Nina not to overcome her disability but to overcome the attitudes about what women and girls with disabilities can achieve.

Keith Bowers of the SF Weekly sums Nina up best, Nina G. grew up with a stutter. A couple of times each minute, a certain syllable will hang her up. She'll stall, repeat the same sound a few times – like the word is literally trapped – but then she'll get it out and move on. All her life people have given condescending advice on how she can cure the condition if she just tries hard enough. Others haven't been so kind. To this day grown people mock her and laugh at her expense. But Nina G. doesn't hide. In fact she'll tell you stories about publicly embarrassing people who've laughed at her. She'll tell you these stories from the stage. See, Nina G. is a comedian, and she deals in comebacks. So if you meet her in a cafe or on a BART platform and want to put her down, think hard on that. (Really. We've seen her. She's fierce.)