Identifier

etd-04022007-223148

Degree

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Communication Sciences and Disorders

Document Type

Thesis

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to test the efficacy of an actor-emotion strategy approach on changing communication attitudes in an adolescent child who stutters. The participant for this study was an eleven-year, ten-month old male attending a public middle school in Baton Rouge, Louisiana who presented with a severe fluency disorder. The participant attended group sessions Monday-Thursday from 9:00-12:00 for 6 weeks as part of a fluency day camp. The study used a worksheet-based measure to evaluate emotionality on a daily basis. Using an ABA withdrawal design, two analyses were completed. The first analysis examined the stability or reliability of the “emotions worksheet” as a measure to identify changes in emotional reaction to stuttering and speech. Results for Phase A showed an unusual range of “total” scores, and what appears to have been one outlier at measurement 2. Despite the relatively stable trends during phases B and A2, the overall data indicate that the “emotion worksheet” as applied in this study was not a reliable measure. The second analysis examined the data collected from the daily journal entries to determine efficacy of the actor-emotion strategy on changing communication attitude. In general, results show little change from the first baseline phase through the treatment phase. Withdrawal of the treatment in the second baseline phase also appeared to result in little change. The average for both comparisons was not reliably different, which suggests that the actor-emotion strategy as applied in this study was not an effective intervention technique for altering the child’s emotional reaction to his speech.

Date

2007

Document Availability at the Time of Submission

Release the entire work immediately for access worldwide.

Committee Chair

Paul Hoffman

DOI

10.31390/gradschool_theses.1988

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