Pros And Cons Of Stuttering

In Davenport, Iowa in 1939, Dr. Wendell Johnson and Mary Tudor decided to test the idea that stuttering was only caused by genetics. At the time, it was believed that stuttering could not be treated, and a person without a stutter could not develop a stutter. However, Dr. Johnson believed that a stutter could be made worse if it was labeled, and a labeling a child without a stutter as a stutterer could actually make them a stutterer. In the study, 22 orphans from a veteran’s orphanage were selected to participate. 10 of these children were labeled as a stutterer by their teachers and matrons before the study began. Tudor and 5 other graduate students then tested the 10 orphans and rated them on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being a poor speaker and 5 being fluent).

The other 12 participants were normally speaking children (no stutters) randomly selected from the orphanage. Six normally speaking children were put in the positive therapy group and the other six were put in the negative therapy group. During the experiment, the positive therapy group received positive feedback about their speech; they got encouragement and praise for their speech. Stutterers in this group showed signs of improvement and the normal speaking orphanage children in this group were not affected. However, the negative therapy group children were made more self-conscious about their speech, and they were lectured about their stuttering. The normal speaking children in this group showed signs of psychological trauma after the 5 month experiment and they developed lifelong speech problems. The stutterers in this group did not show any