Emotional Reactivity and Regulation in Preschool-Age Children Who Do and Do Not Stutter: Evidence From Autonomic Nervous System Measures

Abstract

Purpose: This experimental cross-sectional research study examined the emotional reactivity and emotion regulation in preschool-age children who do (CWS) and do not stutter (CWNS) by assessing their psychophysiological response during rest and while viewing pictures from the International Affective Picture System (Lang et al., 2008).Method: Participants were 18 CWS (16 boys and two girls; mean age 4 years, 5 months) and 18 age- and gender-matched CWNS. Participants' psychophysiological responses were measured during two baselines and two picture viewing conditions. Skin conductance level (SCL) and heart rate were measured to assess emotional reactivity. Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) was measured to assess emotional regulation. Participants' shyness and executive function were assessed via parent report and considered for their effects on participants' psychophysiological responses.Results: First, CWNS and CWS did not differ in their initial baseline SCL, heart rate, or RSA, but all participants had higher SCL and lower RSA in the second baseline, subsequent to the first challenge condition, compared to the first baseline. Second, during the challenge conditions, CWS did not differ from CWNS in their SCL, but showed a significantly higher heart rate than CWNS. Third, CWS exhibited a significantly lower RSA during the challenge conditions compared to CWNS. Lastly, the temperamental quality of shyness was associated with preschool-age children's SCL, such that participants who were rated higher in shyness had a higher SCL during the challenge conditions. Participants' executive function had a marginally significant effect on the RSA, such that the participants who had higher executive function composite scores exhibited lower RSA during the challenge conditions.Conclusions: Our findings suggest that CWS and CWNS did not differ in their emotional reactivity and emotional regulation abilities at rest. During challenge conditions, however, CWS tended to be more emotionally reactive, as indicated by a higher heart rate, and also employed more emotional regulation, indexed by a greater decrease in RSA, compared to CWNS. Preschool-age children's behavior is largely dominated by reactivity, but there is the emergence of regulation, which can help children adjust to various contextual demands. For CWS who are more emotionally reactive, regulatory skills may be particularly critical to their prognosis and treatment.

Psychophysiology-aided Perceptually Fluent Speech Analysis of Children Who Stutter

“…Physiological Parameters in CWS vs. CWNS There is limited research that examines the physiological parameters of CWS vs. CWNS. Recent studies [74,81,100] have shown significant skin conductance (EDA), heart rate (HR), and respiratory effort (RSA) differences in CWS and CWNS in different conditions. A recent study [81] showed that during stress-inducing conditions, the CWS exhibited a higher heart rate (HR) and a lower RSA than the CWNS.…”

“…Recent studies [74,81,100] have shown significant skin conductance (EDA), heart rate (HR), and respiratory effort (RSA) differences in CWS and CWNS in different conditions. A recent study [81] showed that during stress-inducing conditions, the CWS exhibited a higher heart rate (HR) and a lower RSA than the CWNS. A study [89] on AWS has developed a multi-layered perceptron (MLP) neural network-based stuttering disfluency event classification system that takes respiration signals as input.…”

Psychophysiological Arousal in Young Children Who Stutter

“…Psycho-physiological features relevant to affective states and stuttering individual’s physiological responses are extracted from each 2s segments. We extracted the heart rate (HR) from the raw ECG signal, since a recent study [ 74 ] of heart rate (HR) in relation to stressful situations indicates that children who stutter showed a significantly higher HR than CWNS. Electrodermal activity (EDA) signals increases and shows spontaneous fluctuations during arousal [ 9 , 58 ].…”

“…This section evaluates the discriminative capability of the raw physiological features for the CWNS vs. CWS classification task. Notably, recent literature [ 9 , 58 , 66 , 71 , 74 ] have established that the HR, EDA, RSP-rate, RSP-amp are effective features for affective states and stuttering individual’s physiological arousal detection. Hence, this section aims to identify the features’ relative importance rather than feature selection.…”

Association between emotional intelligence and stuttering in school-age children in Kosovo

“…When measured at rest, there are no differences between these two components in children who stutter and their peers who do not. In the case of challenging conditions, however, children who stutter tend to be more emotionally reactive and need to employ more emotion regulation skills (Tumanova, Wilder, Gregoire, Baratta & Razza, 2020). Furthermore, Adigun (2020) pointed out that during the teenage period of stuttering children, levels of EI are impacted by their socioeconomic status, social support, and perceived quality of life.…”