Which of the following is a common secondary characteristic of stuttering?

Eye movements and blinking are indeed a common secondary characteristic of stuttering. These behaviors often develop as individuals attempt to cope with the disfluencies that accompany stuttering. When stuttering occurs, the individual may experience tension or anxiety, leading to physical manifestations such as blinking or excessive eye movements. These secondary characteristics serve as a behavioral response to the primary stuttering itself and are often noticeable during moments of disfluency. The presence of these behaviors can indicate the struggle an individual faces when producing speech fluently, as they may unconsciously try to manage their stuttering through these physical actions.

In contrast, other options relate to different aspects of speech but do not align as secondary characteristics of stuttering in the same way. For instance, increased volume of speech or slower speech rate could be strategies some individuals use to manage their stutter, but they are not inherently secondary characteristics linked directly to the stuttering itself. Frequent pauses, although they may occur during stuttering episodes, do not reflect a secondary behavior resulting from the disfluency, but rather may be part of the natural speech disfluencies that occur during a stutter.