Cortical associates of emotional reactivity and regulation in childhood stuttering.
Hatun Zengin-Bolatkale, Edward G Conture, Alexandra P Key and 2 others
PMID 29723729WHAT IT FOUND
Young children who stutter showed stronger brain responses to unpleasant pictures than peers who do not stutter.
Those with higher self-regulation scores had weaker responses to these negative images. This links stuttering to heightened emotional reactivity, not necessarily a deficit in regulating emotions.
Key findings
01Children who stutter exhibited significantly greater late positive potential (LPP) brain amplitudes when viewing unpleasant pictures compared to children who do not stutter.
02For children who stutter, higher parent-reported effortful control was associated with lower brain reactivity to unpleasant pictures in the early processing window.
03There were no significant differences in brain responses to pleasant pictures or in the ability to use positive reappraisal stories to regulate emotional reactions between the two groups.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample size was small and the age range restricted (4-6 years), limiting generalizability. The study is correlational; it cannot determine if emotional reactivity causes stuttering or results from it. The reappraisal stories may have been too cognitively demanding for preschool-aged children, potentially masking true differences in emotion regulation. Different numbers of participants completed each part of the study due to dropouts and artifact exclusion, which varied the statistical power for each hypothesis.
Declared interests
The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health (N.I.H.) and non-U.S. government funding. No specific conflicts of interest were declared in the provided text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the greater brain response to unpleasant pictures as evidence that emotional reactivity causes stuttering. The study is cross-sectional and correlational, so it cannot determine whether heightened reactivity is a risk factor for developing stuttering or a consequence of living with it.