Listener attitudes toward individuals with cerebral palsy who use speech supplementation strategies

This study examined listener attitudes toward 7 speakers with dysarthria who implemented 3 speech supplementation strategies (topic cues, alphabet cues, and combined topic and alphabet cues) and a habitual speech control condition. Findings were similar, but not identical, to intelligibility results published in 2 earlier papers (K. C. Hustad, J. Auker, N. Natale, & R. Carlson, 2003; K. C. Hustad, T. Jones, & S. Dailey, 2003). For each speaker, alphabet cues and combined cues resulted in higher attitude ratings than habitual speech, and combined cues resulted in higher ratings than topic cues. Listener ratings pertaining to cognitive, affective, and behavioral components of attitude showed that ratings for the behavioral component were the highest for all but 1 speaker. The relationship between intelligibility scores and attitude ratings for each speaker were strong and positive, indicating that attitude ratings seem to increase linearly with intelligibility scores.