Using brief habit reversal and an interdependent group contingency to reduce<scp>public‐speaking</scp>speech disfluencies

Perrin et al. (2021) tested a two-part package on university students who stuttered or filled speeches with “uh” and “um.”

Part one was brief habit reversal: students learned to notice each disfluency and then pause silently for two seconds.

Part two was an interdependent group contingency: the whole class earned bonus points only if every student hit a low disfluency goal.

Most students cut their disfluencies right away and kept the gains when they gave new speeches weeks later.

No extra booster sessions were needed.

Pawlik et al. (2020) used the same brief habit reversal but without the group prize. Their students also improved, showing the core skill works alone.

Perrin adds the group contingency, making the fix cheaper when you teach a whole class at once.

Kahng et al. (1999) paired habit reversal with extra prompts and rewards for clients with intellectual disability. Together these studies show habit reversal can be scaled up or down by adding simple contingencies.

If you run social-skills groups in high schools or colleges, you can drop the two-minute awareness-plus-pause drill into your first session. Add a shared goal—like everyone earning a pizza or extra-credit point—and you may clean up disfluencies for the whole group with almost no extra work.