Operant Conditioning and the Treatment of Stuttering

Over the many years of discussion, debate, and research regarding the nature and treatment of stuttering, a wide variety of points of view has emerged. One set of viewpoints about stuttering has been that it is a learned behavior, thus implying that stuttering is a by-product of experiences encountered by a person; that is stuttering stems from interactions between a person's behavior and environmental events. Operant conditioning is one view of the leaning process. It has been derived from extensive laboratory studies on animals and humans, and serves to delineate known phenomena about how organisms learn. Operant methodology in stuttering treatment has been discussed by Ryan (1974), Ingham (1975), and Shames (1975). It is the purpose of this paper to describe the kinds of treatment procedures that evolve from the application of the principles of operant conditioning to stuttered and fluent speech. Three major characteristics of an operant conditioning approach to the understanding of behavior are (1) direct, continuous, and reliable measurement of the behavior of interest, (2) intensive study of individual subjects, and (3) use of procedures that alter response rates. These characteristics have obvious relevance to the treatment of stuttering. The first two items will be illustrated through the sample treatment programs that follow, but first it is important to have a firm understanding of some of the basic principles of behavior change embodied in the principles of operant conditiong. Operant behaviors are those that are controlled (increased, decreased, or changed in form) by their consequences. The scientific study of operant behavior has demonstrated that the products of such behavior, that is, the consequences that follow a particular behavior, are the variables reponsible for changes in that behavior. Consequences exert control over operant behavior whether they are the natural and spontaneous products of a response or are purposefully arranged to occur. Further, the more immediately the event follows the occurrence of a behavior, the more likely that event is to influence the behavior. Certain kinds of events that might occur following a response produce particular effects on that behavior. For example, when a response occurs and is immediately followed by a stimulus or event that is positive, that response is more likely to occur in the future; that is, it increases in its frequency of occurrence. This principle is referred to as positive reinforcement, and the stimulus that generates this increase in reponse frequency is called a positive reinforcer. Costello and Felsenfeld (1979) demonstrated a positive