Speech Related Anxiety in Adults Who Stutter

The relationship between anxiety and stuttering has always been a topic of debate with a great emphasis on research focused on examining whether speech-related anxiety can exacerbate stuttering. This investigation compares some speech-related anticipatory anxiety indices in fluent and dysfluent utterances in adults who stutter (AWS). We scored the level of cognitive speech-related anxiety (anticipatory anxiety) using a self-reporting method and also evaluated the autonomic aspects of anxiety (state anxiety) through recording changes in Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) signals. Explaining the link between stuttering and anxiety is expected to assist practitioners in stuttering assessment and subsequent treatment strategies. Phasic GSR values of six events related to answering the verbal stimuli through fluent and dysfluent responses were registered to measure sympathetic arousal as an index of state anxiety in 20 AWS (M-age = 35 +/- 4 years, range: 21-42). To quantitatively examine the cognitive aspects of speech-related anticipatory anxiety, two questionnaires were rated by participants addressing the stuttering anticipation and semantic difficulty of verbal stimuli. GSR measures of fluent events were significantly higher than dysfluent counterparts within time windows before and during answering aloud the verbal stimuli (p < .001). Later in the experiment, GSR values of dysfluent events were found to be higher than their fluent counterparts (p < .001). Stuttering anticipation yielded a weak negative meaningful correlation with the scores of fluency (r = -0.283, p = .046) and a positive yet nonsignificant correlation with the stuttering scores. The semantic difficulty had a moderately significant correlation with stuttering anticipation (r = 0.354, p = .012) but not a meaningful correlation with fluency state. Autonomic and cognitive indices of speech-related anticipatory anxiety are not robust predictors of fluency. Anxiety seems to be more of a consequence of stuttering than a cause.