Working memory capacity and rumination in adults who stutter.

The sample was small: 26 adults total, with 12 adults who stutter. The study compared groups at one time and did not test treatment or follow-up. The negative words were general emotional words, not words tied to stuttering or communication threat. Participants did not complete a communication stressor before the rumination measure, so the rumination task may not have captured stuttering-specific post-event rumination. The paper states 26 participants in methods but also refers to 24 participants in the limitations section. Some participants reported multilingual knowledge, and English affective ratings may not fit all participants. Treatment history was not fully controlled, and a preliminary analysis included only 8 participants in a treatment group.

The authors declared that Dr. Coalson and Dr. Croft are salaried employees of the Arthur M. Blank Center for Stuttering Education and Research. Dr. Byrd is a salaried employee of the University of Texas at Austin and also serves as Founding and Executive Director of the Arthur M. Blank Center for Stuttering Education and Research and President of the World Stuttering and Cluttering Organization. Research was supported by NIH grants R21DC018109-01A1 and F31DC020117-01, and by the Blank Foundation Legacy Grant.

Do not read this paper as evidence that working memory difficulty causes rumination in adults who stutter. The study found no group difference in discarding negative words, and it found no significant link between that task and rumination in the small stuttering group.