The effect of emotion on articulation rate in persistence and recovery of childhood stuttering.
Aysu Erdemir, Tedra A Walden, Caswell M Jefferson and 2 others
PMID 29443691WHAT IT FOUND
Children whose stuttering persisted slowed their speech after a negative video, while children who later recovered and nonstuttering children did not.
For therapists, speech-rate change after negative emotion may be a marker to watch, not a tested treatment effect.
Key findings
01After watching a negative video, children whose stuttering later persisted spoke more slowly than children whose stuttering later recovered.
02The same negative-emotion slowing appeared when articulation rate was measured in fluent utterances only.
03Children who later recovered showed a larger difference between fluent and stuttered speech than persisting children, with faster fluent speech.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The groups were small, and the recovered and nonstuttering groups were selected to match the persisting group size. The children were classified as persisting or recovered after later visits, so the study shows an association with later status, not a validated prediction rule. The emotion manipulation was a laboratory video and storytelling task, not everyday conversation. The study did not measure physiological emotional responses, so it cannot show why articulation rate changed. The sample was preschool-age, monolingual English speakers with normal hearing and no other speech-language disorders, so it may not apply to older children, bilingual children, or children with additional disorders. The authors state that more studies are needed to validate the results.
Declared interests
The supplied metadata lists NIH extramural research support. No author conflict declaration is included in the text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that articulation rate after negative emotion can diagnose persistence or that therapy should target speech rate to prevent persistence. The study was small, used a laboratory emotion task, and did not test prediction in new patients or any treatment outcome.