| The choice to engage in a conversation is emotionally and socially risky to adults who stutter (AWS). Speaking is critically important to functioning as a human, but the consequences of a potential stuttering episode can create psychological distress. Therefore, understanding and quantifying decision-making related to speaking is an important part of treatment with AWS. To date, no measure exists that specifically quantifies communication decision-making for this population.Therefore, the present studywas aimedto develop and validate this measure. The measure was based on probability discounting (PD), a behavioral measure of risk-takingthat determines the extent to whichthe subjective value of a reward decreases as its oddsagainstreceipt increasesand is assessed by presenting individuals with a series of choicesbetween smaller, certain rewardsversus larger, uncertain rewards. AWS (n=67) and adults who do not stutter(AWNS; n=93) were recruited onlineand from a national stuttering organization listserv. Participants completedthe novel PD taskfor communication, in addition to self-report measures of stuttering, communicative participation, anxiety, self-efficacy, and demographics. Results revealed that engaging in communication decreased hyperbolically as a function of increasing dysfluency likelihood, consistent with previous PD patternswith other types ofoutcomes.In addition,a magnitude effect was apparent—larger magnitudes ofnegative social reaction risk led to higher communication discounting withboth AWS and AWNS. Importantly, AWS showed more systematic response patterns compared to AWNSwith the PD task, whichsuggests AWS may be more sensitive to outcomes involving communication, dysfluencies, and listener reaction. Significant associations also were observed between the PD task and stuttering, communication
xparticipation, anxiety, and self-efficacy measures among AWS and AWNS. Overall, the newly developed PD task for communication creates a way for researchers to assess underlying decision-making patterns related to communication in a stuttering population, which may have importance in treatment decision making for providers.Key words:communication, fluency, probability discounting, risk-taking, stuttering |