A guidance program based on positive psychology techniques to develop emotional regulation and its effect on improving verbal fluency among stuttering students in the primary stage,2025

Submitted by :Nihad Gad El-Karim Abu Daif Abu El-Majd
Supervised by: 
Prof.  Osama Arabi Ammar
 prof. Eman Salah El-Din El-Sherif
Assiut University,Faculty of Education,  Special Program

God has blessed us with the blessing of communication, as communication plays a fundamental role in human life, starting from satisfying one's natural needs and ending with self-esteem, especially since self-esteem is crystallized through interaction with others. Language and speech are among the basic tools that help a person communicate with others and acquire the values ​​and customs of society.

Basma Salem (2015, 1164) indicates that communication skills are a means of expressing feelings, ideas, needs, exchanging information, and understanding between individuals. There are multiple forms of communication between individuals, such as: verbal language, and non-verbal language such as signs, hand gestures, drawings, and suggestions. However, verbal language remains the most common form of communication and understanding between an individual and others. Therefore, it becomes important to take measures to detect various types of communication disorders in children early. Both Prelock & Hutchins (2018, 18) believe that any disturbance in the communication process has negative effects on the person, and communication disorders mean pronunciation disorders, fluency disorders, voice disorders, and language and speech disorders.

Nariman Rifai and Abdel Qader Ashraf (2011, 237) indicate that stuttering is one of the common speech and speech disorders that affect the communication process, as the stuttering individual cannot explain his linguistic concepts verbally to others, which makes him unable to interact socially and communicate successfully with them, which leads to a feeling of deficiency, lack of self-confidence, and fear of speaking at any time.

The study problem:

The study problem arose from the researcher's review of previous studies and literature, as the problem comes from the importance of the increasing prevalence of stuttering disorders, which contributed to increasing interest in it, as it constitutes a serious problem that threatens the individual's entity and leads him to live in conflict between his desire to communicate with others.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Mental Disorders Manual (DSM-5) issued by the American Psychiatric Association (APA, 2013) indicated that stuttering, according to the statistics it provided, is the most dangerous speech disorder, as it was found that between 80-90% of children aged (5-7) years suffer from stuttering, and the prevalence rate between boys and girls is (4-1). Ahmed Musa and Yasser Fares (2015, 193) confirmed that students who suffer from stuttering face a problem in communicating with their community, as they suffer from various types of social suffering, as they are exposed to ridicule and sarcasm, and their way of speaking becomes a source of laughter for those around them, so they feel rejected and unaccepted, so they try to avoid situations of verbal communication with others, and withdraw from them, and feel a decrease in their self- and social value. Walaa Hassan (2023, 31) indicates that stuttering is a situational phenomenon and its cause is psychological and is due to reasons Multiple interact with each other and overlap in a way that makes it difficult to separate them, and among these reasons is that some stuttering children are exposed to abnormal practices and methods of their parents such as neglect, cruelty and excessive parental expectations, and these forms make the child afraid of linguistic situations and hesitate to communicate with others.

The results of many studies indicated that stuttering students suffer from weak verbal fluency compared to normal students, such as the study of Salihovk 0 (2010), the study of Tilling (2010), the study of Asmaa Abdullah Muhammad (2011), the study of Nahed Adnan Abu Al-Majd (2016), the study of Muhammad Ibrahim Abdul Majeed (2017). The results of the study by Arnold, Conture, Key, and Walden (2011, 276:29) showed that people who stutter have difficulties in regulating their emotions. The results of the study by Tarkowski & Humeniuk (2019) also showed that stuttering students show more excitement in emotionally stimulating situations, are less flexible and emotionally controlled, and have trouble expressing themselves. Therefore, the researcher conducted an exploratory study on a group of stuttering children in a special education center, where the number of children was (3) ranging in age from (9-13) years, where the severity of stuttering varied from simple to severe. These students showed weakness in verbal fluency and deficiency in emotional regulation. The reasons for weakness in verbal fluency and deficiency in emotional regulation for these stuttering children are attributed to lack of self-confidence and fear, family and psychological factors, hyperactivity, and emotional deprivation. This prompted the researcher to suggest positive psychology techniques to develop emotional regulation, which affected improving verbal fluency among stuttering students in the primary stage.

Study objective:

·        Developing emotional regulation through a guidance program based on positive psychology techniques for stuttering students in primary school.

·        Improving verbal fluency through developing emotional regulation for stuttering students in primary school.

Importance of the study:

A- That the study contributes to reducing stuttering disorder in primary school children

B- That the study contributes to developing emotional regulation in stuttering children and improving verbal fluency through positive psychology techniques.

C- Shedding light on stuttering children to reduce bullying, develop their self-confidence and deal with the surrounding environment

Study terms:

Training program:

It is a set of organized and planned activities and tools that take place within counseling sessions and are based on positive psychology techniques, which are (self-confidence, hope, happiness, mental alertness) and these techniques are presented individually or collectively during sessions to develop emotional regulation

Emotional regulation:

It is a set of strategies that express the individual's efforts to control the state of emotional arousal and redirect, improve and modify it so that the individual can perform adaptively that helps achieve his goals. Hanan Hussein Mahmoud (2016, 69-117)

The researcher defines emotional regulation procedurally: as those processes through which a stuttering child can control his emotions and his ability to deal with feelings to form appropriate feelings according to what the situation requires through positive psychology techniques.

Verbal fluency: The child's ability to express ideas and meanings and the ease of formulating them in words, or images to express them in a way that is connected to others and appropriate to them. Muhammad Abdul Salam (2020, 76)

The researcher defines verbal fluency procedurally: It is the child's ability to practice speaking appropriately and pronounce speech sounds, and combine sounds with each other to form understandable words to help him communicate and interact with others.

Stuttering: It is a disorder in the natural fluency of speech and is characterized by repetitions, extensions, hesitations, confusion and pauses during speech. Ibrahim Al-Zuraiqat (2018, 223)

The researcher defines stuttering procedurally: It is a disorder in verbal fluency that appears in the form of excessive stopping of speech or repetition or extension of the sound or word or syllable and may be associated with some psychological manifestations such as fear and anxiety, which hinders the child from the process of communicating with others.

Research community:

The research community included stuttering children in the African Foundation in Sohag and the Abdel Rahim Fouad Foundation in Assiut, and the study groups were derived from them, namely:

A. Exploratory study group:

A survey sample of (15) students was randomly selected, aged between (9-12) years, with an arithmetic mean of (9.4) and a standard deviation of (1.3), from the African Foundation and the Abdel Rahim Fouad Foundation, in order to verify the validity and reliability of the research tools.

B. Basic study group:

A basic sample of (10) students was randomly selected, and the sample settled on these students, whose ages ranged between (9-12) years, with an arithmetic mean of (9.5) and a standard deviation of (1.25), from the African Foundation, in order to verify the effectiveness of the program.

Study tools: -

1. Emotional regulation scale prepared by the researcher

2. Verbal fluency scale prepared by the researcher

3. Stuttering severity scale (prepared by Nahla Al-Rifai)

4. (Training program) prepared by the researcher

Study results:

The study found that there were statistically significant differences between the average ranks of the study sample students in the pre- and post-measurements of the emotional regulation scale and the verbal fluency scale, and also there were no statistically significant differences between the average ranks of the study sample students in the post- and follow-up measurements of the emotional regulation scale and the verbal fluency scale.

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