Background: Previous research suggests a negative stereotype toward people with fluency disorders (i.e. stuttering and/or cluttering), although recent findings suggest that exposure to an actual person who stutters (e.g. a live or video presentation) leads to more positive perceptions of some personality traits. However, there is a paucity of…

The purpose of this study was to examine college students' perspectives on dating a person who stutters (PWS). One hundred and thirty-two college students responded to a 19-item survey questionnaire. Survey items included questions about participants' familiarity with persons who stutter, family and/or personal history of stuttering, knowledge of…

An open-ended, written survey was administered to 146 university students who did not stutter to obtain their impressions of the effects of stuttering on the lives of people who stutter (PWS). Participants first wrote about the general effects of stuttering and then considered how their lives would be different if they stuttered. Both types of…

To determine how early "the stuttering stereotype" is assigned, 160 university students rated a hypothetical vignette depicting either a 3-, 4-, 5-, or 6-year-old with or without the statement "He stutters". A factor analysis of the semantic differential scale showed a three-factor solution comprised of 17 of the 25 bi-polar adjective pairs. The…