Developmental stuttering emerges in 5-8 percent of children between 24-60 months of age. However, stuttering resolves for most of these children by the age of 7. Our research focuses on identifying processes that contribute to the early onset of stuttering and risk for persistence. Cross-sectional studies in the lab have demonstrated that children who stutter, compared to children who do not stutter, exhibit differences in emotional, cognitive control, and speech planning and production processes. These studies have motivated our current longitudinal research designed to identify whether emotional reactivity and/or its impact on speech-related motor processes, such as inhibition and speech initiation, confer heightened risk for stuttering persistence.
To address these aims, we are conducting a largescale longitudinal study of young children who stutter over a three-year period to determine whether our diverse set of caregiver report, behavioral, and neurophysiological measures predict outcomes (e.g., persistence vs. resolution of stuttering). Further, we will evaluate whether our measures of emotional reactivity and emotion-related inhibition and speech initiation yield significant improvements to our ability to predict outcome when combined with other established measures associated with stuttering persistence (e.g., stuttering severity, sex, etc.).
If successful, the proposed project addresses the continued clinical need to identify markers of risk for stuttering persistence and improve the accuracy of predictive models. These advances will allow clinicians to better pinpoint targets for assessment, set the stage for novel therapeutic approaches, and allow researchers to better evaluate the effects of early intervention due to an improved ability to distinguish persistent from transient cases. Thus, the proposed research supports the mission of NIDCD by discovering new knowledge that has the potential to improve outcomes of young children who stutter.
