Saturday, April 19, 2008

Antwerp Conference Day II


Over all, a very well organised conference with good speakers... Congratulations to the organizers, especially Kurt Eggers.

We are in Day II of the Antwerp conference. This morning we had a talk by Ed Conture on his Diathesis-Stressor Model of Childhood Stuttering, and by the conference organiser Kurt Eggers who talked about his PhD research on temperament and attention. Kurt showed his results on the 16 temperament dimensions, and shows two variable below p<5%. However, I do not find this a very strong result, especially because he did not indicate the value itself and he did not show the effect size. These are essential parameters to interpret results and should be in any scientific talk. So it might well be a marginal result and not very clear signal. Also, a measurement error analysis lacked, but I can hardly fault him on this issue as NO-ONE does it in stuttering research. I am convinced that if everyone includes such an analysis, it will reduce the number of significant results considerably. The article is going to be published soon, so maybe I know more then. Concerning Conture's model, I am not convinced. I asked a question about whether emotional aspects are important before even before onset, and he said yes. I find this hard to understand. I can see that the model or a similar framework is useful to explain why some kids recover and some don't but not for onset itself.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Tom -

Your question to Dr. Conture "MUST BE" or "IS" the single most pivotal dynamic to whether the Diathesis-Stressor Model of Childhood Stuttering has any validity whatsoever.

All of us who stutter thank you for asking the question and exposing the fallacy.