School-age children's perceptions of a person who stutters

The present study examined the perceptions school-age children have of stutterers. Four groups of fourth and fifth grade students viewed a videotape with either the speaker stuttering or not stuttering while reading a poem. A semantic differential scale of bi-polar adjective pairs was used to rate the speaker on intelligence and personality traits. The current study found that there is a significant difference between school-age children's perceptions of stutterers and nonstutterers with the ratings for the disfluent speaker more negative than the ratings for the fluent speaker. It was found that children did not rate personality and intelligence related traits differently. This information can be used to validate the need for education regarding stuttering for children and those who work with children. Educational objectives: The reader will learn about and be able to (1) identify perceptions of stutterers by a variety of groups; (2) discuss the implications of research on perceptions of stutterers; and (3) compare/contrast children and adults and their perceptions. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.