Mental state verb use in play by preschool-age children who stutter and their mothers.
Stacy A Wagovich, Katie Threlkeld, Lauren Tigner and 1 others
PMID 38640516WHAT IT FOUND
Preschoolers who stutter used mental state verbs like "think" and "know" at the same rate as their peers.
However, unlike typical children, their use of these verbs did not increase with age or language skills, suggesting other factors may influence this communication flexibility.
Key findings
01Children who stutter did not use fewer mental state verbs than their non-stuttering peers.
02For children who do not stutter, the use of mental state verbs increased with age and language skills, but this relationship was absent in children who stutter.
03Mothers generally used more mental state verbs than their children, but there was no significant link between how many verbs a mother used and how many her child used.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study used spontaneous play samples, which naturally contain fewer mental state verbs than structured tasks would. This may have made it harder to detect subtle differences or developmental trends. The sample size was moderate (35 pairs per group), which may limit the ability to detect smaller effects. The study was cross-sectional, so it cannot show how these patterns change within individual children over time. The lack of correlation between age/language and MSV use in the stuttering group was an absence of significance, which does not prove no relationship exists, but rather that it was not found in this sample.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest. Funding sources are not explicitly detailed in the provided text, but the study was part of a larger project at the University of Missouri and Indiana University.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that children who stutter have a deficit in mental state language. They used these verbs at the same rate as their peers. The finding is that the typical developmental link between language skills and mental state talk was not observed in this group, which is a question for further research, not a confirmed clinical marker.