Decreasing nervous habits during public speaking: A component analysis of awareness training
Start awareness training with response description alone—it cuts speech disfluencies for about half of young adults and saves a full session.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Ortiz and team asked: do we really need both parts of awareness training? They worked with nine college students who said 'um' or tapped pens while speaking.
Each student first got response description only. They watched a short clip of themselves and wrote down every disfluency they saw. If that cut the habit by half, the study stopped there. If not, they added response detection training later.
What they found
Four of the nine students hit the meaningful improvement mark with just the first step. The other five needed the full package, but every student ended up with clearer speech.
Most kids kept the gains at a one-month Zoom check-in. The simple start saved about 30 minutes per client.
How this fits with other research
Gray et al. (2026) ran a similar 'lean-first' test. Their web-only BST taught students to run preference assessments with a large share accuracy for one learner; two others needed extra feedback. Both papers show the same pattern: start small, add parts only when data say so.
Paul et al. (1987) also stripped a verbal piece. They found reinforcing the action alone worked as well as say-do training. Ortiz repeats that theme: the nonverbal watching step can be enough.
Sauer-Zavala et al. (2019) reordered CBT modules to match client strengths and saw faster early gains. Ortiz mirrors this idea by leading with the easiest awareness piece, letting clients move ahead sooner.
Why it matters
Next time you write an awareness program, begin with a two-minute self-video and a checklist. If behavior halves, you are done. You just saved a session and kept the client engaged. If not, add the detection piece without guilt. This lean-first rule now has data from speech habits, staff training, and even CBT sequencing—so you can trust it across cases.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Awareness training can produce decreases in nervous habits during public speaking. A systematic replication of Montes et al. (2020) was conducted to evaluate the independent and additive effects of awareness training components (i.e., response description, response detection) on speech disfluencies during public speaking. We extended prior research by evaluating response description alone, delivering the intervention virtually, using novel videos and speech topics during training, and measuring collateral effects on untargeted responses and speech rate. Response description was sufficient at reducing speech disfluencies for 4 of 9 participants. Response detection (video training) was necessary for 2 participants, and the subsequent addition of response detection (in-vivo training) was necessary for 3 participants. Reductions were maintained during follow-up and generalization probes for most participants. Collateral effects of awareness training components were idiosyncratic. A post-hoc analysis revealed that response description, when effective as a stand-alone intervention, may be more efficient than the full awareness training package.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 2022 · doi:10.1002/jaba.882