Relation of emotional reactivity and regulation to childhood stuttering

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to examine relations between children's emotional reactivity, emotion regulation and stuttering. Participants were 65 preschool children who stutter (CWS) and 56 preschool children who do not stutter (CWNS). Parents completed the Behavior Style Questionnaire (BSQ) [McDevitt S. C., & Carey, W. B. (1978). A measure of temperament in 3-7 year old children. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines,19,[245][246][247][248][249][250][251][252][253]. Three groups of BSQ items measuring emotional reactivity, emotion regulation, and attention regulation were identified by experts in children's emotions. Findings indicated that when compared to their normally fluent peers, CWS were significantly more reactive, significantly less able to regulate their emotions, and had significantly poorer attention regulation, even after controlling for gender, age, and language abilities. Findings suggest that the relatively greater emotional reactivity experienced by preschool children who stutter, together with their relative inability to flexibly control their attention and regulate the emotions they experience, may contribute to the difficulties these children have establishing reasonably fluent speech and language.Learning outcomes-The reader should be able to (1) define emotional reactivity and emotion regulation, (2) explain how emotional reactivity and emotion regulation relate to preschool stuttering, and (3) understand recent empirical evidence linking reactivity and regulation to preschool stuttering.Despite an extensive literature in psychology regarding emotional reactivity and regulation (see Eisenberg & Fabes, 1992, for a review) and an equally extensive literature in speechlanguage pathology regarding stuttering (e.g., Bloodstein, 1995; Conture, 2001; Guitar, 1998), in recent years there has been relatively little intersection between speech-language pathology approaches to stuttering and psychological approaches to emotion, stress and coping (for early, notable exceptions, see Fitzsimons, 1960, and Brutten & Shoemaker, 1967). This is unfortunate given that emotional reactivity and regulation have been shown to influence a wide range of developmentally important outcomes such as communication (Dixon & Shore, 1997;Dixon & Smith, 2000;Karrass & Braungart-Rieker, 2003;Paul & Kellogg, 1997), school performance (Ialongo, Edelsohn, & Kellam, 2001), and psychopathology (Eisenberg et al., 1993; Eisenberg, Fabes et al., 1997) in children who do not stutter.Given the relations among emotional reactivity and regulation and communicative development, there is reason to expect that reactivity and regulation may influence childhood stuttering, or at least possibly exacerbate or maintain the problem. This expectation is consistent with recent reviews and findings from empirical studies regarding the emotional development and behavior of children who stutter (e.g., Anderson, Pellowski, Conture & Kelly, 2003; Embrechts, Ebben, Franke & van de Poel, 1998; Wakaba, 19...

Preliminary Investigation of the Relationship between the Temperament of Young Children Who Stutter and the Temperament of Their Parents

“…Findings complement others in suggesting differences in specific aspects of temperament (e.g., emotion reactivity, emotion regulation, attention regulation, behavioral inhibition) between children who stutter (CWS) and children who do not stutter (CWNS) or differences among sub-groups of CWS based on age or other characteristics of stuttering (e.g., disfluency type, presence of secondary behaviors) [1,[7][8][9][10][11]. However, a systematic review of the literature suggests that not all children who stutter present with temperamental characteristics of high reactivity and inattention and may just affect a sub-group of children who stutter [1].…”

“…Karrass et al also employed the BSQ to investigate temperamental differences in young CWS and CWNS ages 3-5 years of age in comparison to their typically fluent peers [11]. This study found that parents of CWS reported their children to have higher emotional reactivity and less emotional regulation in comparison to parentreports of CWNS.…”

“…Although some studies report differences based on behavioral observation, many employ methodology primarily based on parentreport in which the parent(s) completes a questionnaire detailing their account of their child's temperament [2,4,5,[11][12][13][14][15]. Prior to discussing these research studies in more detail, first we will consider a definition of temperament.…”

“…With further consideration of describing temperament, there are aspects of temperament considered as contributing factors in theories explaining the development and/or maintenance of stuttering with young children [11]. Therefore, continued interest in investigating the role of temperament in childhood stuttering is ongoing.…”

“…However, the root of these differences remains unknown. Based on the implications of the previously discussed studies, temperamental differences could lead to difficulties with achieving speech fluency which may be due, in part, to an apparent influence of emotional reactivity and regulation on different areas of child development, including communication [11,25].…”