What was the purpose of the Monster Study?
The Monster Study was conducted by Dr. Wendell Johnson (a speech pathologist) to learn more about why children developed a stutter. Johnson developed the Monster Study to see if stuttering was a result of learned behavior or Biology, however there are many ethical problems with the study.
What did the Monster Study find?
Nothing in the study indicated any of the subjects became stutterers. But researchers concluded that those in the negative therapy group showed a loss of self-esteem and other detrimental effects seen in adult stutterers.
Why was the Monster Study unethical?
The Monster study is speech impediment experiment that was done on the children that lived in the orphanage. This study violated a lot of ethical issues because the children were psychological harm, informed consent was not given and the subjects were deceived.
What is the hypothesis of the Monster Study?
Results of the Study Tudor concluded that her findings supported the hypothesis that “evaluative labeling can influence behavior” (Tudor 1939). A few months after Tudor left the orphanage, the orphanage contacted her to voice their concerns about the children’s speech.
How old were the kids in the Monster Study?
These children, ranging in age from 5 to 15, were to be told that their speech was not normal at all, that they were beginning to stutter and that they must correct this immediately.
What was Wendell Johnson’s theory?
The diagnosogenic (semantogenic) theory for the onset of stuttering was initially proposed by Wendell Johnson in the early 1940s. It suggested that calling attention to a child’s normal hesitations (repetitions) could precipitate stuttering (Bloodstein, 1987).
Is Monster Study ethical?
The so-called ‘Monster Study’ on children’s stuttering was dramatic, had shaky ethics and was never published. First, it had extremely shaky (practically non-existent) ethical standards. Second, its results were never published for fear it would be likened to experiments carried out by the Nazis (Rothwell, 2003).
Is the monster experiment ethical?
Despite the researcher’s good intentions, the study fails on any number of ethical dimensions. The children were never told they had been involved in a study, until it was revealed by a newspaper over 60 years later. The teachers and administrators of the orphanage were also misled about the purpose of the study.
What causes stutter?
Researchers currently believe that stuttering is caused by a combination of factors, including genetics, language development, environment, as well as brain structure and function[1]. Working together, these factors can influence the speech of a person who stutters.
What type of experiment was the Monster Study?
stuttering experiment
The Monster Study was a stuttering experiment performed on 22 orphan children in Davenport, Iowa in 1939. It was conducted by Wendell Johnson at the University of Iowa.
What causes stuttering?
What is the Diagnosogenic theory?