The Monster Study - The Study

The Study

The research began with the selection of twenty-two subjects from a veterans' orphanage in Iowa. None were told the intent of her research, and they believed that they were to receive speech therapy. Tudor was trying to induce stuttering in healthy children and to see whether telling stutterers that their speech was fine would produce a change. Included among the twenty-two subjects were ten orphans whom teachers and matrons had marked as stutterers before the study began. Tudor and five other graduate students who agreed to serve as judges listened to each of the children speak, graded them on a scale from 1 (poor) to 5 (fluent) and concurred with the school's assessment. Five were assigned to Group IA, the experimental set, and would be told that their speech was fine. The five in Group IB, the control group, would be told that their speech is "as bad as people say".

The remaining 12 children were chosen at random from the population of normally fluent orphans. Six of these were assigned to IIA. 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. The final six children in Group IIB, similar in age to those in IIA, were normal speakers who were to be treated as such and given compliments on their nice enunciation.

On the first visit, Tudor tested each child's I.Q. and identified whether they were left-handed or right-handed. A popular theory at the time held that stuttering was caused by a cerebral imbalance. If, for example, you were born left-handed but were using your right hand, your nerve impulses would misfire, affecting your speech. Johnson did not believe the theory, but still suggested Tudor test each child's handedness. She had them draw on chalkboards and squeeze the bulb of the dynamometer. Most were right-handed, but left-handed children were present in all of the groups. There was no correlation between handedness and speech in this subject crop. During this period, they assigned numbers to the children, such as "Case No 15 Experimental Group IIA..."

The experimental period lasted from January until late May 1939, and the actual intervention consisted of Tudor driving to Davenport from Iowa City every few weeks and talking with each child for about 45 minutes. She followed an agreed-upon script. In her dissertation, she reported that she talked to the stuttering youngsters who were going to be told that they did not stutter. She said to them, in part, "You'll outgrow, and you will be able to speak even much better than you are speaking now. . . . Pay no attention to what others say about your speaking ability for undoubtedly they do not realize that this is only a phase."

To the non-stuttering youngsters in IIA, who were to be branded stutterers, she said: "The staff has come to the conclusion that you have a great deal of trouble with your speech. . . . You have many of the symptoms of a child who is beginning to stutter. You must try to stop yourself immediately. Use your will power. . . . Do anything to keep from stuttering. . . . Don't ever speak unless you can do it right. You see how stutters, don't you? Well, he undoubtedly started this very same way."

The children in IIA responded immediately. After her second session with 5-year-old Norma Jean Pugh, Tudor wrote, "It was very difficult to get her to speak, although she spoke very freely the month before." Another in the group, 9-year-old Betty Romp, "practically refuses to talk," a researcher wrote in his final evaluation. "Held hand or arm over eyes most of the time." Hazel Potter, 15, the oldest in her group, became "much more conscious of herself, and she talked less," Tudor noted. Potter also began to interject and to snap her fingers in frustration. She was asked why she said 'a' so much. "Because I'm afraid I can't say the next word." "Why did you snap your fingers?" "Because I was afraid I was going to say 'a.'"

All of the children's schoolwork fell off. One of the boys began refusing to recite in class. The other, eleven-year-old Clarence Fifer, started anxiously correcting himself. "He stopped and told me he was going to have trouble on words before he said them," Tudor reported. She asked him how he knew. He said that the sound "wouldn't come out. Feels like it's stuck in there."

The sixth orphan, Mary Korlaske, a 12-year-old, grew withdrawn and fractious. During their sessions, Tudor asked whether her best friend knew about her 'stuttering,' Korlaske muttered, "No." "Why not?" Korlaske shuffled her feet. "I hardly ever talk to her." Two years later, she ran away from the orphanage and eventually ended up at the rougher Industrial School for Girls — simultaneously escaping her human experimentation.

Mary Tudor herself wasn't untouched. Three times after her experiment had officially ended she returned to the orphanage to voluntarily provide follow-up care. She told the IIA children that they didn't stutter after all. The impact, however well-meaning, was questionable. She wrote to Johnson about the orphans in a slightly defensive letter dated April 22, 1940, "I believe that in time they . . . will recover, but we certainly made a definite impression on them."