Me,My Stuttering,and Them! Effect of Self-Disclosure of Stuttering on Listener Perception

Abstract

Purpose:

A common question encountered by speech-language pathologists while dealing with adults who stutter (AWS) is whether their disclosure of stuttering to listeners would change their perception. The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of self-disclosure and speaker sex on adult listeners’ perceptions of simulated stuttering.

Method:

The study involved a group of 100 college students between the age range of 18 and 25 years, who judged the videotaped speech samples of 1 male and 1 female person, who simulated stuttering in disclosed and undisclosed state. The listener perception was evaluated through a questionnaire developed for the purpose.

Results:

The trends suggested that a female AWS possessed overall better listener perception as compared with male AWS in undisclosed condition and received better perception by listeners in more domains than male AWS in disclosed state.

Conclusions:

Listener perception seems to be a sex-specific phenomenon which gets affected by one’s disclosure about stuttering and the culture of the listeners.

Introduction

Stuttering is a problem of speech fluency in which the speaker repeats or prolongs sounds or has blocks while speaking. Some define stuttering as a complex communication disorder that not only interferes with the forward flow of speech but also creates negative emotions and reactions in both the speaker and listener. ¹ It has been observed during clinical assessments in our setting that the impairment seen in adults who stutter (AWS) does not always parallel its impact on quality of life. An individual with mild stuttering may exhibit a severe restriction in social participation. The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health model by World Health Organization proves to be an apt model to explain stuttering and its related impact. ² The impact of the disorder is a product of a complicated interaction between the existing impairment and environmental factors. Similarly, in case of stuttering, the quality of life of an AWS depends on the nature of stuttering, that is, the frequency and severity of dysfluencies, the secondary behaviors, and environmental factors such as social acceptance, societal adjustments, and social reactions.

One primary environmental factor which contributes to overall impact of stuttering is the reaction of listeners toward the AWS and his or her stuttering. Various researchers have identified listener’s perception to be a key factor in stuttering assessment and therapy.^{3 –6} According to research, certain negative stereotypes toward AWS are presented by a range of reactions. ⁷ Some of these stereotypes are that AWS are considered to be generally quiet, guarded, avoiding, fearful, unpleasant, nervous, and shy among others.^8,9 Perhaps, one such aspect of the negative listener perception evolves from a listener’s discomfort or uncertainty about AWS and/or how to react when stuttering occurs during a communicative interaction.^10,11 The negative feelings that an AWS experiences related to speaking are usually compounded by negative reactions expressed by listeners and the anticipation of negative reactions.^12–14 There are also evidence that the negative listener reactions affect the AWS in many different ways socially,^1,14 academically, ¹⁵ and professionally. ¹⁶ Thus, the listener’s reactions and attitudes have a significant impact on the self-perception of AWS. Clinicians are often encountered by a query from AWS about the impact of their disclosure of stuttering on the reactions and perceptions of listeners toward them. There have been efforts in the past which have focused on studying the effect of disclosure on listener perception. Self-disclosing has been reported to benefit the AWS by reducing the anxiety or tension about hiding stuttering from a listener and improving social interactions with people who do not stutter.^3–6 Research has shown that when an AWS self-discloses to a listener that he or she is having stuttering, this self-disclosure may positively impact the listeners’ perceptions of the stuttering speaker. The act of self-disclosure has been used to facilitate the stutterer’s acceptance of his or her own stuttering. ¹⁷

Effect of self-disclosure on listener perception is regulated by other factors such as the sex of the speaker and the cultural constraints of the region. Research has shown that listeners perceive speakers who self-disclosed their stuttering to be more friendly, confident, and outgoing in comparison with those who did not self-disclose. The study also revealed that on controlling self-disclosure and observer sex, observers perceived female speakers in comparison with male speakers to be less friendly, shy, insecure, unintelligent, less confident, and outgoing. ¹⁸ One study presented a comprehensive review of studies of attitudes toward male and female AWS from the perspectives of the sex of the speaker and the observer, in which earlier studies^19,20 revealed no difference in attitudes of listeners toward male and female stutterers. ²¹ However, later research reported less negative attitudes for adult women than men. ²² Some studies^23,24 inspected individual items in the questionnaire and found that for some items men had more positive perceptions of those who stutter than women, but the reverse was observed for other items. In one study, self-disclosure of stuttering was affected by sex bias by the observers. They perceived men to be more positive in comparison with women regardless of the speaker disclosing the presence or absence of stuttering. The association of women to a stigmatized sex group coupled with stigmatized conditions such as stuttering makes them more uniquely susceptible to being perceived negatively. ¹⁸

One’s cultural background is known to change one’s perceptual, behavioral, physiological, and affective responses to stuttering. Some studies examined attitudes toward numerous communication disorders between different racio-ethnic groups of people.^25,26 In one such study, Chinese listeners tend to blame AWS for not being able to speak normally. Recently, a comparison study between African Americans and European American listeners reported that African American listeners are more likely to believe that AWS are responsible for their dysfluencies. ²⁷ Chinese listeners considered the people who stutter duller than the normally fluent speaker, whereas American listeners did not show such a perception. African Americans considered the AWS to be more self-derogatory demeanor after observing the stuttering speech, Chinese listeners found the AWS as carrying the same degree of self-derogatory when compared with normally fluent speakers, and European Americans considered the personality traits debilitated after viewing stuttering. Culture plays a role in regulating some aspects of these negative responses, suggesting that people who stutter in Chinese or African American societies witness comparatively higher social penalties for their stuttering, as compared with those in European American culture. ²⁷

The evidence from research about the significance of self-disclosure of stuttering are limited and have not been studied across different cultural settings, such as India, where the nature of the impact of self-disclosure on listener perception may be distinct. Also, it is known to a limited extent whether the effect of self-disclosure on the listener perception of stuttering will vary with respect to the sex of the AWS. However, clinicians recommend AWS to practice techniques such as disclosure, acknowledgment, and advertising when they communicate with their listeners irrespective of the sex of the speaker. Reports from AWS revealed that usage of such techniques does most of the times prove to elicit positive result from listeners. However, we realize a strong need to assess the nature of impact these disclosures may pose on listeners in a multicultural setting like ours. It is also necessary to evaluate listener perception across wide range of dimensions to get a holistic viewpoint of the listener about the individuals and his or her speech impairment, respectively. It is important to evaluate whether the nature of impact of disclosure on listener perception would vary with the sex of the AWS. The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of self-disclosure and speaker sex on adult listeners’ perceptions of simulated stuttering. The objectives of the study were to examine listener’s perceptions of AWS as a function of sex and self-disclosure.

Methods

Participants

A group of 100 college-going students between the age range of 18 and 25 years were randomly divided into 4 subgroups of 25 students each. The participants were recruited through an open invitation displayed in the premises of respective college. Each group had 12 male and 13 female participants. The exclusion criteria for selecting the participants, which was ascertained through a screening by a speech-language pathologist, were presence of any significant medical history and family history of hearing deficits or any other speech or language disorder. All students who were typically fluent (as ascertained through a screening), proficient in English (score greater than 7 on the Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire), ²⁸ and consented for their participation were considered for this study. The research had the ethical consent from the Institutional Ethical Committee.

Materials

Two speech-language pathologists (a man and a woman), who were typically fluent speakers, simulated a stuttering speech sample which was video-recorded using a high-resolution video camera. The speakers did not differ from each other on the parameters such as age, dialect, and education. The speakers were instructed to narrate a 5-minute video (from Mr. Bean TV Series) which was shown to them few moments prior to the recording. They were instructed to introduce themselves and disclose their nature of stuttering before initiating the actual narration. The statement “I would like to tell my listeners to please bear with my speech as I stutter” was used for the disclosure. An apologetic version of the self-disclosure statement was selected as most people with stuttering are found to use an apologetic self-disclosure statement like this than an informative or neutral self-disclosure. ¹⁸ The video-recorded samples from both the speakers were further edited to derive 2 more videos, respectively. These 2 new videos were edited to delete the introduction and disclosure of the person’s stuttering. Therefore, now, the 4 videos, ie, narration sample with and without disclosure by male and female speaker, respectively, were used as stimulus to elicit listener perception data. Both the speakers exhibited equivalent levels of struggle filled with overt stuttering behaviors such as repetitions, prolongations, and silent postural fixations on speech sounds, in addition to tension-filled secondary behaviors such as head jerks, lip protrusion, and facial grimaces. Each of them was rated as having similar severity of stuttering by 3 experienced speech-language pathologists using Stuttering Severity Instrument-3 for adults. ²⁹ The videos were also confirmed by the subject experts to possess similar complexity, sentence length, grammar, and content.

The questionnaire to assess listener’s perception was developed by a senior speech-language pathologist after performing a focus group discussion (with other speech-language pathologists and AWS) and literature review.^{5,30 –32} It was important to design a new survey questionnaire due to 2 reasons. First, cultural issues and, second, research similar to this in past have given lesser emphasis in surveying listener’s perspective on the communication intent and communication competency of the speaker. The questionnaire in preliminary form, which consisted of 20 questions, was validated by 5 experienced speech-language pathologists (minimum 5 years clinical experience with AWS). For each of the item and domain in the questionnaire, experts were instructed to provide a Likert-style rating on a 5-point scale where “1” indicated extremely irrelevant, “2” as irrelevant, “3” as can’t say, “4” as relevant, and “5” as extremely relevant. The formula used for the calculation of the content validity index has been provided below:

$$Contentvalidityindex=\frac{Numberofspeech-languagepathologistswhoratedtheitemas“4”or“5”}{Totalnumberofspeech-languagepathologistsinvolvedinvalidation}$$

The results of the content validity index have been summarized in Table A1.

The details provided in Table A1 depicts that all the domains and the questions received an average score of greater or equal to 4 and the content validity index of greater than 0.8, except for the fifth question of first domain. Therefore, this item “This person shows character” was considered for the replacement. The remarks from the experts who validated the questionnaire revealed that the question could be reworded to “This person shows good character.” The suggestions were incorporated, and in the final questionnaire, the replacement was done for this item. For the rest of the questionnaire, the ratings suggested items to be relevant or extremely relevant. Therefore, these items were retained in the similar form in the final questionnaire.

The internal consistency of the responses obtained by listeners of all the 4 subgroups was examined using the Cronbach α. A Cronbach α of greater than 0.7 was obtained for the scores obtained by listeners for the 4 conditions indicating a good internal consistency.

Any domain/question which obtained the content validity score of greater than 0.7 was considered in the final version of the scale, which was used to assess the listener perception of the stuttering speech sample. The validated version of the questionnaire consisted of 20 questions categorized under 4 subdomains: (1) “personality trait” which consisted of 6 questions, (2) “communicative intent” consisting of 3 questions, (3) “communicative efficiency” which consisted of 6 questions, and (4) “social” which consisted of 5 questions. The validated questionnaire is available in the Appendix 1. Listener’s perceptions of stuttering samples in both self-disclosure and undisclosed conditions were measured using Likert-style rating scale. The listener perception of the items had to be rated on a 5-point rating scale where 0 stood for “not at all” and 4 indicated “extremely.”

Procedure

Each listener subgroup was shown 1 of the 4 videotaped narration samples by a male or a female AWS, with or without disclosure of his or her stuttering. Listeners were made to watch the video in a group. They were being supervised to ascertain that they do not discuss among each other while the video was being played and during the survey. The video was played via a projector on the screen and could be heard through the loudspeakers. Listeners were instructed to attend to the video sample and perform the rating on the developed questionnaire.

Statistical analysis

The scores obtained on the questionnaire, by listeners of the 4 subgroups, were tabulated and subjected to descriptive statistics and 1-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) to examine the statistical significance of differences between the groups. The level of significance was set at P < .05.

Results

The “Results” section provides the descriptive statistics of the data followed by application of 1-way ANOVA to the data to examine the statistically significant differences. The overall mean differences, in percentage, between the listener perceptions rating for the 4 conditions are shown in Figure A1. The results have been shown for each of the 4 domains of the listener perception questionnaire.

The results depicted in Figure A1 suggest that the overall listener perception was better for the stuttering sample of the female speaker as compared with the male speaker for all the domains of the questionnaire except the domain on communication competency in disclosed and undisclosed condition. The effect of disclosure was greater for the female sample as compared with the male sample. However, this effect was domain specific and thus should not be generalized to all the domains. The magnitude of the positive listener perception was greater for females for the domain on personality. For the remaining 3 domains of the questionnaire, the overall differences in listener perception were found to be minimal for either of the sexes.

Further to this, 1-way ANOVA was applied to the data to evaluate whether these observable mean differences reached a statistically significant mark. The results of 1-way ANOVA have been summarized in Table A2.

The results of the 1-way ANOVA revealed that there were some statistically significant differences observed between the 4 conditions on the parameters of the questionnaire. Among the 4 domains, the statistically significant differences were observed for the domains on personality of the speaker (F(3) = 5.988, P = .001) and social domain (F(3) = 2.836, P = .042). An item-specific analysis revealed that under the personality domains, 3 questions that is “This person is friendly” (F(3) = 2.407, P = .072), “This person shows good character” (F(3) = 3.079, P = .031), and “This person is emotionally well adjusted” (F(3) = 3.240, P = .025) showed a statistically significant difference. For the social domain, the question “His/Her acknowledgment of speech difficulty has/would have changed my opinions towards him/her” reached a statistically significant mark (F(3) = 3.407, P = .021). The listener perception in 4 conditions was found to be statistically similar for the domain of communication intent and communication competency. However, the question “This person is communicating like any other normal person” under the domain of communication competency was found to be statistically significant (F(3) = 4.293, P = .007). Following these results, pairwise comparisons were done for the personality and the social domains to identify the condition specific differences. The results of the pairwise comparison are provided in Table A3.

The results of the pairwise analysis reveal that the mean scores in female speaker with stuttering was found to possess better listener perception for the personality traits as compared with the male speaker with stuttering which was true for the disclosed as well as undisclosed condition. Indicating that irrespective of self-disclosure of stuttering by the speaker, the listeners perceived female AWS to possess better personality traits. As suggested by 1-way ANOVA results, the differences would have been highly significant due to the items A4 (This person is friendly) and A5 (This person shows character). The other differences which were statistically significant were for the domain of social issues. Here, the comparison of men and women with disclosure was found to be significant, suggesting that the mean score in female AWS was higher on listener perception scores as compared with the male AWS. Results of 1-way ANOVA advocate that these findings would have been achieved due to the greater difference for item D5 (His/Her acknowledgment of speech difficulty has/would have changed my opinions towards him/her). Indicating that the listener’s would change their perception of a female speaker with stuttering if she would not have disclosed her speech difficulty, but same would not have happened for a male speaker.

It was necessary to evaluate the specific items on the questionnaire where the effect of sex-specific disclosure on the listener perception was visible. To accomplish this, the mean and standard deviation of ratings obtained for each item of the questionnaire, by the listeners of all 4 conditions, were computed. These details have been provided in Table A4.

The results shown in Table A4 provide the item-specific listener perception scores for the 4 conditions.

Personality domain and listener perception

In the personality domain, the mean rating of all the domains for either of the sexes ranged between “1” and “3.” The scores for 5 of 6 items were higher in disclosed than undisclosed condition for the male speaker. The scores for 4 of 6 domains were higher in disclosed than undisclosed condition for the female speaker with stuttering. The item A3 (This person is trustworthy) showed no change in the mean listener perception score for the female speaker. The mean score of item A1 (This person seems sincere) showed a reduction for both the sexes.

Communication intent and listener perception

In the domain of communication intent, speakers of both sexes were perceived to have greater desire to convey their message in the disclosed than undisclosed condition (B1—This person wants to convey his message). However, for items B2 and B3, results were different for both the sexes. For the male speaker, the sample was perceived as being less struggled and less effortful when disclosure of the stuttering was made. For the female speaker, the struggle was perceived to be more in disclosed condition and ratings on effort remained unchanged.

Communication efficiency and listener perception

For the domain on communication efficiency, the overall ratings for both the groups, in either of the disclosure conditions, ranged between “0” and “2.” The scores for 5 of 6 items were higher in disclosed than undisclosed condition for the male speaker. The lower scores were observed on the item C5 (This person is clear in his thoughts and expression). However, the scores for 4 of 6 items were higher in undisclosed than disclosed condition for the female speaker with stuttering. The mean scores were same for the item C2 (This person is communicating like any other normal person) and found to be higher in disclosure condition for the item C3 (This person is having appropriate body language).

Social domain and listener perception

For the domain on social issues, the range of the rating for all 4 conditions ranged between “0” and “2.” The scores for 3 of 5 items were lower in disclosed condition than undisclosed condition for male speaker. The differences were minimal for the item D2 (This person can participate in public addressing occasion), and the effect of disclosure was not present for the item D3 (I can have this person as my best friend) where the mean listener perception remained unchanged in both the conditions. The scores for 3 of 5 items were higher in disclosed condition than undisclosed condition for female speaker. The change was minimal for the items D2 (This person can participate in public addressing occasion) and D5 (His/Her acknowledgment of speech difficulty has/would have changed my opinions towards him/her) on disclosure.

Discussion

This study was conducted with an aim of understanding how self-disclosure of stuttering could affect the listener’s perception toward the AWS. Also, it was evaluated whether this effect would vary with the sex of the AWS. The results suggested that the effects were not uniform across the 4 domains of the questionnaire and were different for the domains, disclosure conditions, and the sex of the AWS.

Personality domain and listener perception

This domain of the questionnaire consisted of 6 items which elicited the listener perception in terms of sincerity, likability, trustworthiness, friendliness, character, and emotional adjustment levels of the speaker with stuttering. The sex-specific analysis suggested women as having better listener perception as compared with men. The effect of disclosure was not significant for either of the sexes here. In disclosed condition, women were perceived to be significantly better by the listeners. Limited perception of personality traits of AWS by the listeners is not an unusual finding. There have been studies which found listeners to possess negative stereotypes toward AWS. The improvement in the perception of personality traits secondary to the disclosure of stuttering has also been investigated in the past. ³³ Some of the results suggest that disclosure may yield to a better perception of the personality of the AWS,^5,34 whereas another study reports no significant difference in the disclosed and undisclosed conditions. ³⁵

The results of this research are in synchrony with the findings of both the existing findings. Here, the sex-specific differences were observed only for 2 of 6 personality traits, and disclosure did not affect either of the group’s perception significantly. However, the positive trends in the listener perception in personality traits for female AWS in disclosed conditions cannot be overlooked.

Communication intent and listener perception

This domain in the study elicited 3 kinds of responses from the listener about the AWS. First, the extent to which the listeners perceived the intent for communication by AWS. Second, the extent to which the listeners perceived the speakers speech to be effortful and, third, their perception of the moments of struggle. The overall results suggested that there were no significant differences in listeners’ perception for this domain between the sexes in disclosed and undisclosed conditions. These findings do not seem to be unusual because irrespective of the sex of AWS and disclosure by AWS about his or her stuttering, the listeners could easily perceive the effort and struggle experienced by the AWS in the audiovisual presented to them. Such listener perception trends have been reported in the past, where researchers have identified listener perception of effort and struggle in the speech of AWS. ³⁶ Studies have looked into aspects such as perception of visible and audible struggle behaviors, and reported poor listener perception as secondary behaviors associated with the dysfluencies makes it difficult to conceal the stuttering. ³⁷ One study has also reported presence of a poorer listener perception on these domains where the severity of stuttering was greater. ³⁷

Communication competency and listener perception

This domain elicited listener perception ratings for parameter of communication competency of the AWS, such as validity of the spoken content, possessing good body language while speaking, being a good communicator, possessing clarity in expression, and finally if listeners found the speech of the person as being pleasant. The male AWS seem to have acquired a better perception than the female AWS in this domain. However, the differences were found to be statistically significant for 2 items, ie, “AWS is communicating like any other normal person” and “Speech of AWS is pleasant.” For the former, listeners found the male AWS to be better than the female AWS, and this difference further widened as the perception improved for male AWS in the disclosure condition as compared with the female AWS where the rating remained unchanged. For the latter, the results showed that in undisclosed condition, the speech of female AWS was perceived to be better than the male counterpart. With disclosure, the perception of the male speaker improved, whereas that of female speaker reduced.

Social domain and listener perception

The items in this domain of the questionnaire aimed at eliciting the perception of listeners toward the critical aspects of listener’s life. This included ability of the person to be a leader, his or her ability to participate in a public addressing occasion, readiness of the listeners to have an individual with such speech as their friend, readiness of the listeners to have such a speaker as a their life partner, and finally effect of speakers’ acknowledgment of his or her stuttering or their perception about him or her. Here, irrespective of the disclosure as variable, the female AWS obtained higher listener perception score as compared with the male AWS. The results suggested that listener perception scores of female AWS were significantly higher as compared with the male AWS. Of the 5 items under this domain, the final item assessed the change in opinion of the listeners due to the disclosure. For the female AWS, listener’s responses suggest that whether she discloses or not about her stuttering, their perceptive of her stuttering for various parameters would not change. This further got verified as the listener perception scores for the undisclosed condition were negligibly different from the scores in disclosed condition, whereas for the male AWS, the listener perception scores suggested that the disclosure of stuttering had a negative impact. Descriptively, listeners perceived female AWS to have better leadership qualities, friendlier, possessing higher capability to address public and more feasible option as a life partner when compared with the male AWS. Some of these variables have been studied in the past. Friendliness character of the speaker has been studied, and similar trends have been reported in listener perception. ³² Studies have also looked into evaluating the listener’s attitude toward AWS holding a position requiring leadership. The results of the study supported that if a AWS is chosen for a high-status job, then they would receive negative feedback and be less likely picked for the job. ³⁷ Such discriminations at high-status job and work environment toward AWS have been reported elsewhere too.^{38 –40} Self-esteem and social adjustment abilities of AWS have also been reported to have poor perception by listeners. ³¹ The sex-specific results of this study fetches its support from the studies in the past which have reported that men were rated more negatively as compared with women for their job efficiency and positions due to the stuttering. ⁴¹ About the relationship profile of the AWS, researchers have discussed that AWS face an impact in various life aspects, including vocation, romance, daily activities, friends/social life, family, and general lifesty. ⁴² There are reports that adolescents and young adults consider peers who stutter less attractive than nonstuttering peers and that they are less likely to engage in a romantic relationship with them. ⁴³ Results of another similar study which aimed at identifying the college student’s attitudes toward dating a AWS suggests that half of the participants were unsure whether they would date a AWS and would base their decision on the personality, severity of stuttering, the physical attractiveness, and intelligence of the AWS. ⁴⁴ However, reports of sex difference in this sphere are rare. And, the results of this study may provide some preliminary data.

The overall results of this study suggest that it is not a straightforward question to answer whether the disclosure of stuttering would positively impact the listener’s perception toward AWS. The trends emerging in this study suggest that the effect of disclosure on listener perception varied with each domain. This variation was not observed to be similar for both the sexes. The disclosure improved the perception of the male AWS only for the communication competency, whereas female AWS received the advantage of disclosure for the personality and the social domain. Probably the listener perception depends on the ability of the listeners to practice “theory of mind” and understand the impact of stuttering by placing themselves in the place of the AWS. ⁴² Another way of explaining a similar phenomenon has been reported in a study where authors have proposed an inference hypothesis and also anchoring-adjustment hypothesis. ⁴⁵ According to this explanation, listeners anchor themselves to the state of the AWS on the basis of few dysfluent instances from their lives. The inferences are then adjusted to understand the negative listener responses and disruptions to their social lives, career plans, and academic performance.

This research has its own limitations. There are multiple variables with respect to listeners which can be crucial in understanding the listener perception of stuttering. Some of these components include the age, sex, and familiarity to stuttering or the person with stuttering by the listeners. These variables have not been considered in this work. For example, a male speaker may perceive a male and a female AWS differently and vice versa. A middle-aged or old-aged adult may have different perspective to an AWS as compared with a young college-going listener. A listener who has encountered stuttering in his immediate environment in the past may hold different opinions about stuttering as compared with a naive listener. Even the professional background of the listener has been identified as having an effect on his or her perception of stuttering. There have been other variables associated with the disclosure of stuttering by the AWS, which can affect the results of this study. The location of disclosure in the discourse and the statement used to disclose have been identified as having an effect on the listener perception. Some studies have identified the disclosure made at beginning of the discourse to be more effective in acquiring positive listener perception scores as compared with a disclosure made during the termination of the discourse.^32,35 There have also been reports pertaining to the nature of the disclosure statement. Study has shown that an apologetic statement may obtain a different perception by listeners as compared with an informative statement which only aims at revealing the stuttering. ³⁵ Therefore, the results of this study should be interpreted with an understanding that the disclosure statement was made at the beginning of the discourse, and the wording of the disclosing statement was more inclined toward the apologetic one. The design of such studies has also been argued for listener perception. Some authors have reported that listener perception changes as a function of self-disclosure only when same listener is involved in doing judgment in the 2 conditions. ³⁴ They reported no differences when the listeners were randomly assigned to only one of the conditions to view and rate. Importantly, this demonstrates that allowing participants to compare both conditions provides the best design for recognizing the effects of self-disclosure on listener perceptions.

Conclusions

The intention of this research was to explore whether the speech-language pathologists should advise self-disclosure strategy to the AWS. With reference to the findings of this study, a female AWS may possess an overall better listener perception as compared with the male AWS in undisclosed condition and may even receive a better percept by listeners on more domains than male AWS if disclosure of the stuttering is done. However, considering the complex interaction of speaker and listener-related factors which can affect listener perception, it may be better to take the decisions on the basis of each AWS circumstances, sex, work, culture, environment, and needs.