The purpose of this study was to assess the amount of time spent by the clinician and client in verbalization and to make an analysis of the kind of verbalizations employed by the clinician in speech therapy sessions. Experience was given consideration as a possible variable in the study. Nine clinicians in a public school setting were used as subjects. They were divided equally into the three following categories : (a) clinicians having less than one year’s experience. (b) clinicians having 1-3 years experience. (c) clinicians having more than 3 years experience. Six therapy sessions of each clinician were tape-recorded and analyzed. It was found that experience was not a significant variable in either of the two categories under study. It was shown, however, that there was a negative correlation between the amount of verbalization of clinician and client. Eight out of nine clinicians talked more than the clients. A high correlation was noted between the amount of verbalization used by the clinicians and their use of positive and descriptive utterances. The amount of client verbalization seemed to bear little or no relationship to the kinds of utterances used by the clinician. Analysis of positive and descriptive utterances showed a high positive correlation, while most of the other categories showed evidence of a moderate negative relationship. Further study was suggested for the following: (a) a survey of the different techniques used by clinicians (b) the effect of different techniques on the amount of verbalization used by both clinician and client (c) the modification of the content of the client’s responses by the kinds of utterances used by the clinician The present study may be of most value in indicating a possible means of constructing a profile of the kinds of utterances used by each clinician.
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