These individuals have graciously volunteered to be "virtual clients" for students of speech-language pathology in classes studying fluency disorders, for purposes of practicing diagnostics. Volunteers 1-6 were members of a National Stuttering Association chapter. They have provided very brief case history/personal information. To protect their privacy the names of these volunteers are withheld.

Volunteers 7-10 originate from outside the U.S.; their accents may pose additional evaluation challenges. Scripts of those videos are provided. Volunteer 9 is a clip from a movie that is available on the open internet.

These videos are intended for use only in an educational clinical setting. They should not be downloaded or used externally, but only in a private setting, a class, or by students completing an assignment privately. Treat these videos and the additional information with the same confidentiality you would treat any client. We suggest that students using this page sign a short video use agreement form and return it to their instructor prior to being given access to this activity.

Additional practice materials: Teaching with Fluency is a non-password protected database of transcripts and video clips that can be viewed and downloaded and provides links to materials for teaching about both stuttering and cluttering in adults and children. It is part of FluencyBank, a shared database for the study of fluency development supported by an NIH NIDCD grant R01-DC015494 to Brian Mac Whinney (KJU) and Nan Bernstein Ratner (UMD). It is linked here to provide additional opportunity for students to learn more about fluency disorders.

Purpose

(1) To give you experience evaluating and measuring observable aspects of speech fluency

(2) To help you develop intra- and inter-judge reliability in identifying disfluencies

Videos of Volunteers from the U.S.

To help in evaluating several of the samples below, print out The Grandfather Passage.

Volunteer 1 Case history Short speech sample My Grandfather	Volunteer 2 Case history Making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich My Grandfather	Volunteer 3 Case history Making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich My Grandfather
Volunteer 4 Case history Making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich My Grandfather	Volunteer 5 Case history Making a peanut butter and Jelly Sandwich and My Grandfather (single video)	Volunteer 6 No case history My Grandfather Making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (no controls) Making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (using controls)

 

Videos of Volunteers from Outside the U.S.

with longer speech samples, all with foreign accents, two who are multi-lingual. They have given permission to use their names.

Volunteer 7 Case history Speech sample Script of video

Volunteer 8 Case history Speech Sample Script of video

Volunteer 9 No case history Speech sample

Volunteer 10 Personal information Stammering Is No Joke Script of video

Suggested Assignment — download and print the recommended assignment, which is as follows:

Work in pairs or small groups for this assignment. First, each member of your group should work individually to review two short videos of two individuals who stutter and determine:

1. The individual's rate of speech in syllables/minute
2. The frequency of disfluency
   • in stuttered syllables/minute
   • in percent stuttered syllables
3. The types of disfluencies
4. The average duration of stuttered disfluencies
5. The overall severity of stuttering according to the SSI

Second, after a few days, each member of the group should again review the videos individually and complete the calculation of stuttering frequency again in order to assess intrajudge agreement.

Finally, group members should compare their individual judgments of the videos to assess interjudge agreement. In cases where interjudge agreement is poor, you should view the videos together and come to agreement about what constitutes stuttering in each individual.

Acknowledgments

This project was created several years ago by the Education and Resource Committee of the Special Interest Group (#4 Fluency and Fluency Disorders) of ASHA. The suggested assignment was designed by J. Scott Yaruss. Videotaping was done by Thomas Kuster and Sheree Reese. Technical support was from Jerald Anderson and Thomas Kuster. The website developer is Judy Kuster.

Created October 2008, and reposted with modifications April 26, 2022.