Cross-cultural attitudes toward speech disorders.

Speech-language pathologists serving multicultural populations may encounter unfamiliar beliefs about speech disorders among the members of different cultures. This study used a questionnaire to look at attitudes toward four disorders (cleft palate, dysfluency, hearing impairment, and misarticulations) among 166 university students representing English-speaking North American culture and several other cultures (e.g., Chinese, Southeast Asian, Hispanic). The results showed significant group differences on items involving the subjects' beliefs about the emotional health of persons with speech disorders and about the potential ability of speech-disordered persons to change their own speech.