The cognitive competence of speakers with acquired dysarthria: judgements by doctors and speech and language therapists

Background. Studies have shown that listeners make negative attributions towards people with communication impairments. This appears to be the case for healthcare professionals as well as non-professional listeners.

Aims. This study extends this line of research to speakers with acquired dysarthria. These clients often complain that listeners treat them differently after the onset of their speech impairment. The study examines judgements of the cognitive status of speakers with acquired dysarthria made by health care professionals.

Methods and procedures. Doctors, speech and language therapists and speech and language therapy students viewed videos of speakers with acquired dysarthria and of controls matched for age and gender who had acquired neurological deficits that did not affect their speech. Listeners judged whether speakers could carry out a number of everyday tasks. All the tasks were known to be within the speakers' competence.

Outcomes and results. Doctors were significantly less confident of the competence of speakers with dysarthria than of the controls. No difference was found for speech and language therapists or speech and language therapy students.

Conclusions Although caution is required in generalizing these results to other speakers, the results lend some support to the complaints of clients with acquired dysarthria that their speech leads others, in this case doctors, to misjudge their cognitive competence.