Preliminary thoughts on the role of disfluencies in psychotherapy skill acquisition

Abstract

Psychotherapy is widely recognized as an effective treatment for various mental disorders, and therapists undergo extensive training to obtain qualifications. However, research suggests that therapists' performance does not improve over time despite ongoing education and training. The lack of a reliable measure of skill proficiency in psychotherapy may be a contributing factor, hindering the development of effective training methods. Traditional measures of speed and accuracy are inadequate for assessing skill automatization in psychotherapy. To address this issue, we propose a new method for evaluating skill acquisition in psychotherapy using verbal disfluencies measures. Verbal disfluencies have shown promise in assessing skill development in other fields, such as public speaking and marketing. We argue that changes in patterns of verbal disfluencies can provide valuable insights into the automatization of skills in psychotherapy.