ELSEVIER COMMENTARIES THE COMMUNICATION ATTITUDES AND STUTTERING CONTROVERSY REVISITED: COMMENT ON VANRYCKEGHEM AND BRUTTEN (1996) ROGER J. INGHAM Universit3, of Cali~brnia Santa Barbara At various times over the past 20 years efforts have been made to learn not only whether attitudes toward speech and stuttering are independent variables (Andrews & Cutler, 1974; Erickson, 1969), but also whether such attitudes may influence either stuttering (Guitar, 1976) or the recovery from stuttering ther- apy (Guitar & Bass, 1978), The results of those earlier studies prompted a vig- orous debate about the validity of their findings (Guitar, 1979, 1981; Ingham, 1979; Young, 1981) and at least one investigation that showed that "commu- nication attitudes" of persons who stutter may simply reflect their frequency of stuttering in certain speaking situations (Ulliana & Ingham, 1984). A recent study by Vanryckeghem and Brutten (1996) reports the results of an investiga- tion into the communication attitudes of children who stutter (n = 55; 6-13 years) and matched controls using the Communication Attitudes Test (C.A.T.), a scale devised for children who stutter (Brutten & Dunham, 1989; De Nil & Brutten, 1986, 1991). Their findings were interpreted to show that measures of "mal-attitudes" and "fluency failure" in children who stutter "do not reflect one and the same process" (Vanryckeghem & Brutten, 1996, p. 115), even though they were significantly correlated. It is of interest, therefore, to find that neither the rationale nor the methodology of this study takes account of the issues that arose out of the earlier debate about communication attitudes and stuttering. Some recognition of those issues may have provided additional clar- ity to Vanryckeghem and Brutten's findings. Addresscorrespondence to author,Department of Speechand HearingSciences,University of Cali- fornia, SantaBarbara,CA 93106.e-mail:sphlingh@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu J. FLUENCY DISORD.22 (1997), 323-326 © 1997Elsevier ScienceInc. All rights reserved. 655 Avenue of the Americas,New York, NY 10010 0094-730X/97/$17.00 PII S0094-730X(97)00024-7