ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the major concepts in psychological theory that have been applied to the subject of stuttering. It focuses on recent developments in the study of temperament, anxiety and personality as potential factors in the establishment and development of stuttering. Two-factor theory holds that stuttering may be characterized as having a primary stuttering component comprising physical moments of stuttering which occur due to classical conditioned negative emotions. Although he would later become famous for introducing world to his diagnosogenic theory of stuttering, as a younger man Wendell Johnson adhered to the prevailing belief of the time that his disorder was, as Travis and Orton proposed, due to lack of cerebral dominance. The idea of an association between stuttering and emotional overactivity has more recently been taken forward and explained in terms of what Walden call dual diathesis-stressor framework. This aims to demonstrate how the interaction of receptive and expressive language ability can interact with emotional regulation to mediate stuttering.
