The present findings were taken to suggest that cognitive processes are important variables associated with developmental stuttering.

Developmental stuttering is a complex disorder and children who stutter form a heterogeneous group. Most contemporary researchers would agree that multiple factors, including those associated with linguistic, motor, sensory, and emotional processes, are likely involved in its development and/or maintenance. There is growing evidence, however, that cognitive processes also play a role. In this article, we briefly review behavioral and parent-report studies of executive function in children who stutter, the findings of which have generally suggested that these skills may be challenging for at least some children who stutter. We then consider how deficits in executive function could provide an explanatory account for not only the multifactorial nature of developmental stuttering but also the considerable amount of variability that exists among individuals who stutter.

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine cognitive flexibility for semantic and perceptual information in preschool children who stutter (CWS) and who do not stutter (CWNS). Method Participants were 44 CWS and 44 CWNS between the ages of 3;0 and 5;11 (years;months). Cognitive flexibility was measured using semantic and perceptual categorization tasks. In each task, children were required to match a target object with two different semantic or perceptual associates. Main dependent variables were reaction time and accuracy. Results The accuracy with which CWS and CWNS shifted between one semantic and perceptual representation to another was similar, but the CWS did so significantly more slowly. Both groups of children had more difficulty switching between perceptual representations than semantic ones. Conclusion CWS are less efficient (slower), though not less accurate, than CWNS in their ability to switch between different representations in both the verbal and nonverbal domains.

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