Physiological Correlates of Fluent and Stuttered Speech Production in Preschool Children Who Stutter

Walsh, Bridget; Usler, Evan

doi:10.1044/2019_jslhr-s-19-0018

Cited by 10 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 72 publications

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“…We did observe significantly higher background, tonic SCLs in CWS, on average, but these were not exclusive to speech production tasks. It is important to reiterate that the present results were derived from fluent intervals of speech, and SNS correlates of stuttering behaviors are reported in a companion paper (Walsh and Usler, in press).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 70%

“…One hypothesis to consider is that speech specific increases in SNS activity develops later in CWS and/or that speech-specific phasic increases in SNS arousal would more likely be observed surrounding stuttering events. We addressed the latter hypothesis in a companion study (Walsh and Usler, in press). We found that stuttered utterances produced during a picture description task by CWS were associated with significantly higher phasic SCR amplitude, SCR frequency, and reduced BPV compared to fluent utterances.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In order to compare SNS arousal during speech production in CWS and CWNS, we focused exclusively on fluent utterances. We examined PR during fluent and stuttered speech production in a separate study (Walsh and Usler, in press). Overall, these findings in studies of adults and children motivate future developmental studies of autonomic activation during speech and non-speech tasks in typical and atypical speakers.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Sympathetic Nervous System Activity in Preschoolers Who Stutter

Walsh

Smith

Christ

et al. 2019

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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BackgroundIn our Dynamic Pathways, account, we hypothesized that childhood stuttering reflects an impairment in speech sensorimotor control that is conditioned by cognitive, linguistic, and emotional factors. The purpose of this study was to investigate potential differences in levels of sympathetic arousal during performance of speech and non-speech tasks between children who do and do not stutter.MethodsSeventy-two preschool-aged children participated in the study, 47 children who stutter (CWS; 38 boys) and 25 children who do not stutter (CWNS; 18 boys). We recorded skin conductance and blood pulse volume (BPV) signals, indices of sympathetic arousal, during higher/lower load speech tasks (structured sentence production and picture description) and non-speech tasks (jaw wagging and forceful blowing). We included a measure that reflects children’s attitudes about their communication skills and a parent-report assessment of temperament.ResultsWe found no significant differences between preschool CWS and CWNS in phasic skin conductance response amplitude or frequency, BPV, and pulse rate for any of the experimental tasks. However, compared to CWNS, CWS had, on average, significantly higher skin conductance levels (SCL), indexing slowly changing tonic sympathetic activity, across both speech and non-speech experimental conditions. We found distinctive task-related profiles of sympathetic arousal in both groups of preschool children. Most children produced the highest levels of sympathetic arousal in the physically demanding blowing task rather than in speech, as seen in previous studies of adults. We did not find differences in temperament between the two groups of preschool children nor a relationship among behavioral indices of temperament and communication attitude and physiological measures of sympathetic arousal.ConclusionWe did not find that atypically high, speech-related sympathetic arousal is a significant factor in early childhood stuttering. Rather, CWS had higher, on average, task-related tonic SCLs across speech and non-speech tasks. A relationship among behavioral measures of temperament and physiological measures of sympathetic arousal was not confirmed. Key questions for future experiments are how the typical coupling of sympathetic and speech sensorimotor systems develops over childhood and adolescence and whether task related developmental profiles follow a different course in children who continue to stutter.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 70%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Sympathetic Nervous System Activity in Preschoolers Who Stutter

Walsh

Smith

Christ

et al. 2019

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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“…Psychophysiological research with children who stutter is somewhat limited. However, recently a number of studies have examined CWS's autonomic nervous system response to such speaking conditions as picture naming, picture description, and non-word repetition (Jones et al, 2014 , 2017 ; Zengin-Bolatkale et al, 2015 , 2018 ; Choi et al, 2016 ; Tumanova and Backes, 2019 ; Walsh and Usler, 2019 ; Walsh et al, 2019 ). Results of these studies generally indicate that CWS do not have an elevated level of autonomic arousal during speaking.…”

Section: Electrodermal Activity As a Measure Of Emotional Reactivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Tumanova

Wilder

Gregoire

et al. 2020

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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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.

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“…Literature from speech science generally indicates that preschool-age children who stutter do not have an elevated autonomic arousal during such speaking tasks as picture naming, picture description, and non-word repetition [ 7 , 18 , 36 , 37 , 42 , 72 , 78 , 79 , 89 , 90 ]. However, differences in autonomic arousal between children who do and do not stutter based on the children’s age [ 89 ] and complexity of the speaking task [ 72 ] have been reported.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychophysiological Arousal in Young Children Who Stutter

Sharma

Xiao

Tumanova

et al. 2022

Proc. ACM Interact. Mob. Wearable Ubiquitous Technol.

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The presented first-of-its-kind study effectively identifies and visualizes the second-by-second pattern differences in the physiological arousal of preschool-age children who do stutter (CWS) and who do not stutter (CWNS) while speaking perceptually fluently in two challenging conditions: speaking in stressful situations and narration. The first condition may affect children's speech due to high arousal; the latter introduces linguistic, cognitive, and communicative demands on speakers. We collected physiological parameters data from 70 children in the two target conditions. First, we adopt a novel modality-wise multiple-instance-learning (MI-MIL) approach to classify CWS vs. CWNS in different conditions effectively. The evaluation of this classifier addresses four critical research questions that align with state-of-the-art speech science studies' interests. Later, we leverage SHAP classifier interpretations to visualize the salient, fine-grain, and temporal physiological parameters unique to CWS at the population/group-level and personalized-level. While group-level identification of distinct patterns would enhance our understanding of stuttering etiology and development, the personalized-level identification would enable remote, continuous, and real-time assessment of stuttering children's physiological arousal, which may lead to personalized, just-in-time interventions, resulting in an improvement in speech fluency. The presented MI-MIL approach is novel, generalizable to different domains, and real-time executable. Finally, comprehensive evaluations are done on multiple datasets, presented framework, and several baselines that identified notable insights on CWSs' physiological arousal during speech production.

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Physiological Correlates of Fluent and Stuttered Speech Production in Preschool Children Who Stutter

Cited by 10 publications

References 72 publications

Sympathetic Nervous System Activity in Preschoolers Who Stutter

Sympathetic Nervous System Activity in Preschoolers Who Stutter

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

Psychophysiological Arousal in Young Children Who Stutter

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