While most people dislike public speaking, some have it worse than others. Roughly one percent of people are stutterers – their speech is constantly disrupted by pauses and repetitions. However, this only happens when others are around to hear it.
Many stutterers have claimed that they speak perfectly clearly when alone. However, this has never been able to be properly tested – if no-one’s around to listen, there’s no way to know if the speaker is stuttering.
Some scientists have gotten stutterers to speak in an empty room while listening in. However, while this does cause some improvement, the participants didn’t stop stuttering completely, possibly because they guessed the scientists were secretly listening.
This year, four scientists tried a sneakier test. They gave participants a coding-based task and suggested that talking to themselves would make it easier. Because the participants were focussed on the task and not what they were saying, none suspected the scientists were listening from the next room – and their stutters almost completely disappeared.
Lachlan Writes Science 