Self-perceived competence and social acceptance of young children who stutter: Initial findings

Abstract

Purpose: The goals of this study were to determine whether young children who stutter (CWS) perceive their own competence and social acceptance differently than young children who do not stutter (CWNS), and to identify the predictors of perceived competence and social acceptance in young speakers.

Method: We administered the Pictorial Scale of Perceived Competence and Social Acceptance for Young Children (PSPCSA; Harter & Pike, 1984) to 13 CWS and 14 CWNS and examined group differences. We also collected information on the children's genders, temperaments, stuttering frequencies, language abilities, and phonological skills to identify which of these factors predicted PSPCSA scores.

Results: CWS, as a group, did not differ from CWNS in their perceived general competence or social acceptance. Gender predicted scores of perceived general competence, and stuttering frequency predicted perceived social acceptance. Temperament, language abilities, and phonological skills were not significant predictors of perceived competence or social acceptance in our sample.

Conclusions: While CWS did not significantly differ from CWNS in terms of perceived competence and social acceptance, when both talker groups were considered together, girls self-reported greater perceived competence than boys. Further, lower stuttering frequency was associated with greater perceived social acceptance. These preliminary findings provide motivation for further empirical study of the psychosocial components of childhood stuttering.

Learning outcomes: Readers will be able to describe the constructs of perceived competence and social acceptance in young children, and whether early stuttering plays a role in the development of these constructs.

Keywords: Children; Perceived competence; Perceived social acceptance; Self-concept; Stuttering.

Figure 1. PSPCSA composite scores by group

These univariate scatterplots represent the distributional information of the PSPCSA data across groups. The left graph represents data of perceived general competence, and the right graph represents data from perceived social acceptance. The white dots represent each child's individual score, and the short black bars represent the group means.

Figure 2. Gender as a predictor of perceived general competence

This univariate scatterplot represents the distributional information of individual boys’ and girls’ scores (white dots) and the means of the perceived general competence scores by gender (short black bars). The diagonal line represents the regression analysis which indicates the degree of variability in perceived general competence attributed to gender (i.e., boys vs. girls).

Figure 3. Stuttering frequency as a predictor of perceived social acceptance

This univariate scatterplot represents the distributional information of stuttering frequency by perceived social acceptance across all participants. The white dots represent individual participants’ data points (some missing due to missing data), and the black trend line represents the regression analysis which indicates the degree of variability in perceived social acceptance attributed to stuttering frequency (percentage of stuttering-like disfluencies).