Adjacency and Prediction in School-Age Stutterers

Abstract

The adjacency effect is the tendency for stutterings to occur adjacent to previously stuttered words which have been blotted out in successive readings of a passage. It is presumed to show that stuttering may be precipitated by cues that remind the stutterer of past moments of speech failure. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the adjacency effect is to be found in the stuttering of children of elementary school age, and particularly in those children who are unable to predict the occurrence of their blocks. Adjacency was investigated in 12 subjects. The same children were tested for the ability to predict the occurrence of their stutterings in oral reading by raising their hands whenever they anticipated a block. In addition, their judgments about the accuracy with which they could generally anticipate their blocks were recorded. An adjacency effect was observed in all subjects, including six who gave essentially no evidence that they could predict the occurrence of any of their blocks. The findings appear to suggest that a child’s inability to predict blocks does not in itself rule out the inference that his stuttering is an anticipatory struggle reaction.