The reliability among two Master's level clinical psychologists and two Master's level psychiatric social workers in judgment of frequency and location of 8 types of speech disruptions, periodic judgments of speech rate, and location of change in speech rate was determined from interviewees' responses in four taped interviews. With the exception of the “ah” type of disruption, reliability estimates were quite low. The utility of clinical observation of these non-verbal behaviors was questioned when reported by clinicians not specifically and extensively trained for observation of these signs. A suggestion was made regarding the direction for development of training procedures.
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