Emotion Word Use by Adolescents Who Stutter: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

Purpose: Deficits in the ability to use emotion vocabulary may result in difficulties for adolescents who stutter (AWS) and may contribute to disfluencies and stuttering. In this project, we aimed to describe the emotion words used during conversational speech by AWS. Methods: Participants were 26 AWS between the ages of 12 years, 5 months and 15 years, 11 months-old (n=4 females, n=22 males). We drew personal narrative samples from the UCLASS database. We used Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software to analyze data samples for numbers of emotion words. Results: Results indicated that the AWS produced significantly higher numbers of emotion words with a positive valence. AWS tended to use the same few positive emotion words to the near exclusion of words with negative emotion valence. Conclusion: A lack of diversity in emotion vocabulary may make it difficult for AWS to engage in meaningful discourse about negative aspects of being a person who stutters Adolescence is a time when young people reevaluate, categorize, and interpret emotions and their consequences (Thompson, 2000). The ability to accurately perceive and verbally express one’s emotions and consequently regulate behaviors is a crucial developmental undertaking that has implications for future social relationships, academic and vocational success, and interpersonal adjustment. Deficits or underdevelopment of these critical selfregulatory behaviors may become a significant problem in the life of individuals, and research in this area is desperately needed for clinical populations (Carthy, Horesh, Apter, Edge, & Gross, 2010).