Self-perception of stuttering: association with self-perception of hearing, fluency profile, and contextual aspects.
Camila Eduarda Elias Silva, Denise Brandão de Oliveira Britto, Stela Maris Aguiar Lemos
PMID 39841741WHAT IT FOUND
Adults who stuttered rated their hearing difficulties as worse when they felt stuttering impacted their life more.
Objective speech fluency counts did not track with these self-perceived impacts. Occupation was the only background factor linked to how much stuttering affected daily life.
Key findings
01Worse self-perceived hearing in noisy or multi-speaker situations correlated with greater self-perceived impact of stuttering on quality of life.
02Measured speech fluency variables, such as disfluency frequency and speaking rate, showed no significant correlation with self-perceived stuttering impact.
03Occupation was the only sociodemographic or clinical factor significantly associated with the self-perceived impact of stuttering.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study used self-selection, recruiting participants through support groups and social media, which likely biased the sample toward adults who were more bothered by their stuttering. Hearing difficulties were assessed via self-perception questionnaires, not objective auditory processing tests, so it is unclear if the reported issues reflect actual auditory deficits or general communication frustration. The cross-sectional design cannot determine whether hearing perceptions influence stuttering impact, or vice versa. The sample size of 55 adults is relatively small for detecting subtle associations across many variables.
Declared interests
The study was funded by CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior), a Brazilian government agency. No conflicts of interest with commercial entities were reported.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that adults who stutter have clinically diagnosed auditory processing disorders. The study measured self-perceived hearing difficulties via questionnaire, not objective auditory processing tests, and found no link between these perceptions and measured speech fluency.