학령기 말더듬 아동과 일반 아동의 기질과 의사소통태도 특성

Abstract

Characteristics of temperament and communication attitudes in school-age children who stutter.

Cha Hyun Advisor: Prof. Chon HeeCheong, Ph.D. Speech and Language Pathology Graduate School of Chosun University

The purpose of this study is to better understand the characteristics of temperament and communication attitudes in school-age children who stutter and who do not. Thus, a comparative analysis of the characteristics of temperament and communication attitudes between the two groups is performed. Then the degree of stuttering is classified into 'mild' and 'moderate' to be compared to non-stuttering children separately. The same characteristics of the non-stuttering children are studied, and the stuttering level, communication attitude and relation between characteristics are observed. The study subjects are 10 stuttering first to second grade pupils aged from 6 to 8 years 11 months(5 mild, 5 moderate) and 10 non-stuttering ones. They went through CAT-R and CBQ tests(Putnam & Rothbart, 2006). In case of the children who stutter, P-FA-II was done in order to find out the degree of seriousness of stuttering. The study results are as follows : first, the communication attitude of the stuttering children was significantly negative compared to their counterparts(p = .009); second, the communication attitude level of the three groups compared by the seriousness of stuttering resulted in a meaningful difference, but an after-study or afterward assessment found out further that the 'mild' stuttering group showed no significant difference to the non-stuttering group or to the moderate group while the moderate group showed significantly more negative attitude than the non-stuttering group; third, studying the upper level factors(surgency, negative affection, effortful control) and sub-factors for the temperament of the whole stuttering group and the non-stuttering group showed that there was no significant difference; forth, the comparison of the upper level factors and sub-factors for the temperament according to the seriousness of stuttering showed no significant difference; and fifth, the communication attitude level and temperament upper level factors and sub-factors level among non-stuttering children were not significantly different. But the coefficient of correlation of communication attitude and effortful control, one of the temperament upper level factors, turned out to be .448, which is relatively high. When comparing the communication attitude and temperament sub-factors, some of the sub-factors of effortful control such as inhibitory control(r = .554), low intensity pleasure(r = .404) and perceptual sensitivity(r = .480) turned out to be high, too. In case of the stuttering children, the communication attitude and temperament upper level factors and sub-factors were not significantly related. But the high intensity pleasure(r = -.455) showed strong negative correlation. Comparison between P-FA-II stuttering level, communication attitude level and temperament upper level factors and sub-factors, the variables did not show any correlation. But the stuttering level and communication attitude showed relatively high positive correlation(r = .620). The same applies for the correlation of effortful control and the stuttering level(r = .444). Also, the stuttering level and high intensity pleasure showed high negative correlation(r = -412), while discomfort(r = .423) and low intensity pleasure(r = .618) showed high positive correlation. The result indicates that the stuttering children do show more negative communication attitude than the non-stuttering ones, and the higher the seriousness is, the more negative they tend to get, as previous studies have revealed. But on the temperament aspect, there was no significant difference between the stuttering and the non-stuttering children, which disagrees with previous studies which claim that stuttering children are emotionally more negative and have lower effortful control. The temperament did not show any significant difference, either, even among groups divided by seriousness of stuttering. The study of the relation between the non-stuttering children and the temperament, the communication attitude and effortful control showed high correlativity. It is probably because of the high correlativity that occurred with inhibitory control, one of sub-factors of effortful control and also because non-stuttering children showed higher capability to control negative approachability than stuttering ones under an unfamiliar situation or a command. In case of the stuttering children, there was no significant relation between communication attitude and temperament, but one of sub-factors, high intensity pleasure showed high correlativity, which leads to a conclusion that the higher the high intensity pleasure gets, the less negative the communication attitude becomes. The stuttering level and the communication attitude also showed high correlation, which conforms to the previous study results that suggested the significant relation between the stuttering seriousness and communication attitude. Also, the stuttering level and effortful control showed comparatively high correlation. This is probably because the low intensity pleasure, one of sub-factors of effortful control is highly correlated. The result may lead to a conclusion that the lower the low intensity pleasure gets, the more reactive to environmental stimuli and thus the more one stutters. One of the sub-factors of high intensity pleasure showed strongly negative correlation with stuttering level, which may mean the faster one adopts to new environments, the less likely one should stutter. The stuttering level and discomfort showed high positive correlation, which may lead to a conclusion that the more discomfortable one gets, the more likely one should stutter.