This study assessed emotional and speech-language contributions to childhood stuttering. A dual diathesis-stressor framework guided this study, in which both linguistic requirements and skills, and emotion and its regulation, are hypothesized to contribute to stuttering. The language diathesis consists of expressive and receptive language skills. The emotion diathesis consists of proclivities to emotional reactivity and regulation of emotion, and the emotion stressor consists of experimentally manipulated emotional inductions prior to narrative speaking tasks. Preschool-age children who do and do not stutter were exposed to three emotion-producing overheard conversations—neutral, positive, and angry. Emotion and emotion-regulatory behaviors were coded while participants listened to each conversation and while telling a story after each overheard conversation. Instances of stuttering during each story were counted. Although there was no main effect of conversation type, results indicated that stuttering in preschool-age children is influenced by emotion and language diatheses, as well as coping strategies and situational emotional stressors. Findings support the dual diathesis-stressor model of stuttering.

Purpose Emotional regulation of preschool children who do (CWS) and do not stutter (CWNS) was assessed using a disappointing gift (DG) procedure (Cole, 1986; Saarni, 1984, 1992). Method Participants consisted of 16 3- to 5-year-old CWS and CWNS (11 boys and 5 girls in each talker group). After assessing each child’s knowledge of display rules about socially-appropriate expression of emotions, children participated in a DG procedure and received a desirable gift preceding a free-play task and a disappointing gift preceding a second free-play task. Dependent variables consisted of participants’ positive and negative expressive nonverbal behaviors exhibited during receipt of a desirable gift and disappointing gift, as well as conversational speech disfluencies exhibited following receipt of each gift. Results Findings indicated that CWS and CWNS exhibited no significant differences in amount of positive emotional expressions after receiving the desired gift; however, CWS, when compared to CWNS, exhibited more negative emotional expressions after receiving the undesirable gift. Furthermore, CWS were more disfluent after receiving the desired gift when compared to receiving the disappointing gift. Ancillary findings also indicated that CWS and CWNS had equivalent knowledge of display rules. Conclusion Findings suggest that efforts to concurrently regulate emotional behaviors and (non)stutterings may be problematic for preschool-age CWS.

Purpose The purpose of this project was to investigate the possible relation between standardized measures of vocabulary/language, mother and father education, and a composite measure of socioeconomic status (SES) for children who do not stutter (CWNS) and children who stutter (CWS). Methods Participants were 138 CWNS and 159 CWS between the ages of 2;6 and 6;3 and their families. The Hollingshead Four Factor Index of Social Position (i.e., Family SES) was used to calculate SES based on a composite score consisting of weighted values for paternal and maternal education and occupation. Statistical regression analyses were conducted to investigate the relation between parental education and language and vocabulary scores for both the CWNS and CWS. Correlations were calculated between parent education, Family SES, and stuttering severity (e.g., SSI-3 score, % words stuttered). Results Results indicated that maternal education contributed the greatest amount of variance in vocabulary and language scores for the CWNS and for participants from both groups whose Family SES was in the lowest quartile of the distribution. However, paternal education generally contributed the greatest amount of variance in vocabulary and language scores for the CWS. Higher levels of maternal education were associated with more severe stuttering in the CWS. Conclusion Results are generally consistent with existing literature on normal language development that indicates maternal education is a robust predictor of the vocabulary and language skills of preschool children. Thus, both father and mothers’ education may impact the association between vocabulary/language skills and childhood stuttering, leading investigators who empirically study this association to possibly re-assess their participant selection (e.g., a priori control of parental education) and/or data analyses (e.g., post hoc covariation of parental education).

Purpose This preliminary investigation assessed the attentional processes of preschoolage children who do (CWS) and do not stutter (CWNS) during Traditional cueing and Affect cueing tasks. Method Participants consisted of 12 3- to 5-year-old CWS and the same number of CWNS (all boys). Both talker groups participated in two tasks of shifting and focusing attention: (a) Traditional cueing and (b) Affect cueing. The Affect cueing task was preceded by stress-heightening instructions intended to influence participants' emotionality. In both tasks participants provided non-speech motor responses (i.e., button pressing) to computer-presented target stimuli. Targets were preceded by a visual cue (i.e., highlighted box) occurring in the same (i.e., Valid trials) or opposite (i.e., Invalid trials) location as the target stimuli. Reaction times (RT) were measured (in ms) from the onset of the target stimuli to the onset of the non-speech motor response. Errors were tallied for both experimental conditions and were categorized by type. Results Findings of this preliminary investigation indicated that there were no significant between-group differences in RT or frequency of erroneous responses. There were differences in error type that were correlated with RT for both CWS and CWNS when stress-heightening instructions were introduced. Conclusion Preliminary findings suggest that speed of attentional disengaging, shifting and re-engaging does not differ between preschool-age CWS and CWNS during the experimental paradigm employed in this study and that introducing stress-heightening instructions does affect components of performance for both preschool-age CWS and CWNS. Caveats for the present study include a limited sample size of young preschool-aged children as well as methodological concerns. Learning outcomes Readers will be able to: (1) Define attention regulation and describe findings that investigate the role of attention regulation in developmental stuttering of preschool-age children; (2) Describe the components of attention regulation employed during a Posner Cueing Task; (3) Describe the findings of the present study in relation to other studies investigating attention regulation and developmental stuttering in preschool-age children.