Habit Reversal to Decrease Filled Pauses in Public Speaking: A Partial Replication

Abstract

Purpose:

Many students have difficulties in public speaking because of their use of filled pauses (e.g., utterances like “um”; misuse of the word “like”). Mancuso and Miltenberger used habit reversal to decrease filled pauses in public speaking. The present study aimed at replicating this study as a student project.

Method:

Participants were four undergraduate students of social work. The training phase and total number of sessions were shortened compared to the original study.

Results:

The mean number of responses (filled pauses) per minute decreased throughout the study and during follow-up measurement.

Discussion:

Nevertheless, the replication of experimental control wasn’t successful because three of the four participants showed a decrease in response frequency already during the baseline. As a project, the study demonstrates that students of social work with only rudimentary training in single systems research methods can implement evidence-based practice procedures in their work with clients.

Keywords

habit reversal public speaking partial replication single-system design evidence-based practice

Single-System Design Research Methods in Evidence-Based Practice

Although the necessity of evidence-based practice is still debated in German-speaking countries (Deimel, 2018), its standards are increasingly adopted (Ghanem, Lawson, Pankofer, Maragkos, & Kollar, 2017). One important component of evidence-based practice is single-systems design research methodology, which is often used in applied behavior analysis. The suitability of the concepts of behavior analysis and its research methods for the field of social work has frequently been noticed (Gambrill, 2013; Thyer, 1987; Thyer & Maddox, 1988). Social work practice should use intervention strategies of applied behavior analysis and demonstrate their effectiveness with single-systems research designs.

Unfortunately, behavior analysis in Germany is nearly nonexistent. For example, there are no course sequences accredited by the Association for Behavior Analysis International Accreditation Board or by the Behavior Analyst Certification Board. Single-system design research methods are rarely taught in social work education. This is most unfortunate as they offer an economical way of demonstrating the effectiveness of an intervention without the use of bigger groups of participants.

In this study, an undergraduate student of social work with no training in single-case research methodology (prior to the study) used an intervention strategy based on a procedure already described in the behavior analytic literature and replicated the research methodology of a prior study to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention.

Filled Pauses in Public Speaking

Public speaking is a key skill in many professions. Social workers often speak to larger audiences, for example, in community work or at meetings and conventions with social workers or other professionals. Problems in public speaking interfere with professional development and life satisfaction in general. In extreme cases, the person is unable to speak in front of other people. But there are other problems that are also a strain for the speaker.

Filled pauses are interruptions in the normal flow of speech. They consist in the use of sounds like “uhm”, “er,” and so on, clicking sounds, the doubling of words or syllables or the use of meaningless words, for example, “like.” The frequent use of filled pauses makes it hard for the audience to follow the speaker. Generally, the speaker makes the impression of being nervous. Often the speaker realizes her use of filled pauses and becomes even more nervous in response.

Filled pauses are sometimes believed to be the result of anxiety (Kasl & Mahl, 1965). Other explanations consider them a means of controlling speech. Filled pauses occur more often (Maclay & Osgood, 1959) before content words (nouns, verbs, etc.) than before function words (pronouns, particles, etc.). Filled pauses are therefore believed to enable the speaker to organize his thoughts (Lallgee & Cook, 1969).

Behavior analysts consider filled pauses as a kind of habit or tic, with similarities between filled pauses and stuttering (Mancuso & Miltenberger, 2016).

Habit Reversal

Habit reversal has been used for the treatment of tics and nervous habits since the early 1970s (Azrin & Nunn, 1973). Its efficacy in treating nail biting, trichotillomania, stuttering and similar problems is well documented (Bate, Malouff, Thorsteinsson, & Bhullar, 2011; Bloch et al., 2007; Dufrene, Watson, & Kazmerski, 2008; McGuire et al., 2014; Miltenberger, Fuqua, & Woods, 1998). Habit reversal generally consists of two components: awareness training and competing response training. During awareness training, the client receives feedback on the occurrence of the habit and is instructed to signal the occurrence of the habit (or the urge for the habit) herself. In competing response training, the client must show an incompatible behavior whenever he performs the habit or has the urge to perform the habit (e.g., the client should make a fist when he feels the urge to bite his nails).

Study by Mancuso and Miltenberger

Mancuso and Miltenberger (2016) demonstrated that habit reversal is an efficient treatment for filled pauses in public speaking. Six participants decreased their rate of use of filled pauses to a minimum in short improvised talks after they received habit reversal, consisting of awareness training and competing response training. Gains were maintained in 2- to 5-week follow-up observations for all participants. Spieler and Miltenberger (2017) used only the awareness component for the treatment of filled pauses. They achieved similar results. But booster sessions were necessary to maintain the outcome. Montes, Heinicke, and Geierman (2019), in a replication of Mancuso and Miltenberger and Spieler and Miltenberger, also used only awareness training to reduce speech disfluencies. They were successful in reducing the targeted disfluencies without the need for booster sessions.

Replication of the Study

This study aimed at a partial replication of Mancuso and Miltenberger (2016), conducted by an undergraduate student of social work (the second author) and supervised by the first author. The habit reversal procedure was shortened compared to the original study and fewer participants (N = 4) were involved. The calculation of interobserver reliability was also omitted due to restraints in time and resources.

Replications are of great value for the scientific community and the education of junior scientists, although they are underused (Collins, 1985; Makel, Plucker, & Hegarty, 2012; Nosek & Lakens, 2014; Schmidt, 2009; Simons, 2014). Successful direct replications strengthen the internal validity of the original finding: If another team of researchers produces the same results following the procedures of the original study, the finding is more believable. Systematic replications aim at strengthening the external validity or generalizability of the finding. If the results of the original study can be reproduced under different circumstances, with variations to the original procedures, the procedure is demonstrated to be robust to be used in practice.

Students are often advised to try a replication study as their first research project (Frank & Saxe, 2012). Replication studies are easier to design than original studies. The student can use the original study as a kind of recipe or template for her own study. Thus, more challenging research projects are manageable for the student than when conducting original research.

This study tries to demonstrate that a shortened version of the habit reversal procedures described by Mancuso and Miltenberger (2016) can be used by an undergraduate student with little training in behavior analytic procedures and research methods to help participants to reduce filled pauses in public speaking and demonstrate the effectiveness with a single-system research design.

Method

Participants were four undergraduate students of social work in their first semester (three female, one male), ages 18, 23, 24, and 25. All participants were native speakers of German. Participants were recruited from an introductory course in psychology with approximately 250 participants. The second author explained briefly what filled pauses are and the habit reversal intervention, then asked for volunteers. Six students answered to participate in the study. All claimed to have experienced problems with filled pauses in public speaking. Two participants were excluded because of scheduling conflicts. The remaining four participants filled out a sociodemographic survey and a self-evaluation questionnaire about their public speaking capabilities.

The dependent variable of the study was the rate of the target behavior, filled pauses, per minute. Filled pauses were meaningless or doubled words and syllables (other sounds and utterances like “uhm” didn’t occur during baseline observations).

The baseline phase consisted of three sessions with short talks of approximately 5 min each. Topics of the short talks were from the field of behavioral social work. Participants could prepare for the talk by using textbooks and the Internet for approximately 10 min. If a participant would have a rate of fewer than three filled pauses per minute during the first session, the participant would have been excluded from the study. This wasn’t the case.

With awareness training, participants got information about filled pauses and the content of the training. The target behavior was defined. For Participants 1, 2, and 4, filled pauses were meaningless syllables, for Participant 3 meaningless or doubled words. The participants saw a video of a baseline session and were asked to observe and note all instances of the target behavior. After this training, the participants should give another short talk. The participant should identify the urge to show the target behavior by raising their left hand and occurrences of the actual target behavior by raising their right hand. Participants 1, 3, and 4 managed to identify all instances. The mastery criterion for this part of the intervention was 100% recognition in one talk or 85% in two subsequent talks. For Participants 1, 3, and 4, one session of awareness training was sufficient. Participant 2 needed two more awareness training sessions to fulfill the mastery criterion.

The second part of the intervention was competing response training. The competing response for all participants was to pause for 3 s whenever the target behavior occurred. Mastery criterion was to have 80% less filled pauses than the mean of the baseline phase. All participants fulfilled the mastery criterion after only one session (one short talk).

Three days after the intervention, the participant’s performance was evaluated under baseline conditions again. The follow-up measurement consisted of two sessions with a 5-min talk. The mastery criterion for this phase of the study was 75% less filled pauses than in baseline in the two talks.

At last, the participants filled out two questionnaires, again the self-evaluation questionnaire about their public speaking capabilities and a social validity survey with questions about the simplicity of the intervention, how acceptable they found the intervention and how satisfied they were with the intervention.

Results

During baseline, Participant 1 (see Figure 1) showed the target behavior 4.99 times/min (s² = 0.74). The rate of the target behavior declined to 2.2/min after awareness training and 0.63 during competing response training. At follow-up, the mean of the target behaviors per minute was 1.37 (s² = 0.04).

Figure 1.

Filled pauses per minute for Participant 1.

Participant 2 (see Figure 2) performed the target behavior during the three baseline sessions with a mean of 4.20 per minute (s² = 2.0). At awareness training, filled pauses occurred 0.52 times per minute (s² = 0.05) over all three sessions. During competing response training, the participant showed the target behavior with a rate of 0.9 per minute. The two follow-up sessions brought a mean of 0.7 responses per minute (s² = 0.03).

Figure 2.

Filled pauses per minute for Participant 2.

Participant 3 (see Figure 3) showed the response with a rate of 2.97 per minute (s² = 1.7) during the three baseline sessions. After awareness training, the rate dropped to 1.69, with competing response training to 0.32. During the two follow-up measurements, the rate of the target behavior was 0.3 (s² = 0).

Figure 3.

Filled pauses per minute for Participant 3.

For Participant 4 (see Figure 4), the baseline level of filled pauses was 6.45 (s² = 0.15). This rate dropped to 1.76 and 0.5 during awareness training and competing response training. At follow-up, the target behavior occurred 1.51 times (s² = 0) in the mean.

Figure 4.

Filled pauses for Participant 4.

The means for all participants together were 4.65 (s² = 1.58) during baseline, 1.54 (s² = 0.38) after awareness training, 0.59 during competing response training (s² = 0.04), and 0.97 (s² = 0.24) at follow-up measurement.

The self-evaluation questionnaire contained questions about the participants’ perceptions of their capabilities in public speaking. All answers were coded on a 5-point Likert-type scale, with 1 = very bad (negative extreme) and 5 = very good (positive extreme).

The ratings for “How comfortable are you with public speaking” improved from a mean of 2.4 (s² = 0.98) before the baseline measurement to 3.6 (s² = 0.42) after follow-up measurements. “How afraid are you when publicly speaking” improved from 1.9 (s² = 0.17) to 2.9 (s² = 0.17), “How self-confident are you when publicly speaking” from 2.75 (s² = 0.56) to 3.5 (s² = 0.37), and “How often do you use filled pauses” (with 1 = permanently and 5 = not at all) from 2.75 (s² = 0.06) to 3.25 (s² = 0.31). The self-perceptions of the participants’ skills in public speaking changed from 3.25 (s² = 0.31) to 3 (s² = 0.12), that is, the participants found their own skills a little bit less good after the training than before. On the individual level, two participants (1 and 3) found that their skills deteriorated, the two other participants found no difference.

The social validity items were also coded on a 5-point Likert-type scale, with 1 = very bad (negative extreme) and 5 = very good (positive extreme). The participants generally rated the intervention as reasonable (4.5, s² = 0.25), simple (3.5, s² = 0.25), acceptable (4.6, s² = 0.22), and effective (4.5, s² = 0.12).

Discussion

Throughout the study, all participants reduced the use of filled pauses. Gains were maintained in follow-up sessions. However, experimental control of the procedures of habit reversal wasn’t demonstrated. A major weakness of this study lies in the declining baselines with Participants 1–3. For Participant 1, the graph during intervention continues the baseline trend. Obviously, the behavior already changed during baseline observations. As the participant knew what the study was about, the self-generated feedback and the self-directed attention probably was enough for the participants to improve a little bit (they “suppressed” the use of filled pauses). However, there is no “law of exercise”; performance doesn’t improve by simply practicing without feedback (Thorndike, 1927, 1931). There was some feedback for the participants during baseline, simply by hearing themselves talk. Furthermore, there were additional gains during the intervention, not explainable as a continuation of the baseline trend. Participant 4 showed no trend during baseline; the behavior changed only when the intervention began. But the awareness training component alone was enough to reduce filled pauses with this participant. This corresponds with the results from Spieler and Miltenberger (2017) and Montes et al. (2019).

Although this study couldn’t replicate the major findings of the Mancuso and Miltenberger (2016) study, it demonstrates the simplicity and acceptability of habit reversal as a procedure for reducing filled pauses in public speaking, reflected in the social validity results.

The study further demonstrates that an undergraduate student of social work can carry out habit reversal training with this problem behavior and replicate a single-case design study successfully, even with little training in single-case research methodology. Training in single-case research by social work students is a means of bringing evidence-based practice to the profession (Thyer, 2015).

Footnotes

Authors’ Note

This study was conducted by the second author, and supervised by the first author, in partial fulfillment of the second author’s requirements for the bachelor’s degree in social work at the University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Christoph Bördlein

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