Culture and listeners’ gaze responses to stuttering.pdf

INT J LANG COMMUN DISORD, JULY–AUGUST 2012, VOL. 47, NO. 4, 388–397 Research Report Culture and listeners’ gaze responses to stuttering Jianliang Zhang? and Joseph Kalinowski? ?Department of Communication Disorders, School of Education, North Carolina Central University, Durham, USA ?Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, College of Allied Health Sciences, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, USA (Received October 2011; accepted January 2012) Abstract Background: It is frequently observed that listeners demonstrate gaze aversion to stuttering. This response may have profound social/communicative implications for both fluent and stuttering individuals. However, there is a lack of empirical examination of listeners’ eye gaze responses to stuttering, and it is unclear whether cultural background plays a role in regulating listeners’ eye gaze response to stuttering. Aim: To examine listeners’ eye gaze responses to stuttering speech relative to fluent speech in three cultural groups. Methods Procedures: Eighteen African-American, 18 European-American and 18 Chinese adults were audiovisu- ally presented with three stuttering and three fluent speech samples, when an eye-tracking device simultaneously recorded their gaze behaviours. The targets of listeners’ eye gaze included four regions of interest (ROIs) on the speaker’s face: eyes, nose, mouth and outside (i.e., everything else). Listeners’ per cent of gaze time, gaze fixation count and average duration of gaze fixation were analysed with repeated-measures ANOVAs regarding each ROI as functions of the speaker’s fluency status and listeners’ cultural background. Outcomes Results: When observing stuttering speech, listeners tended to reduce gaze fixation duration on the speaker’s eyes and increase their gaze time on the mouth. However, different from the two American groups, the Chinese group reduced their gaze time on the speaker’s mouth. In addition, the Chinese participants’ gaze behaviours were mor