An investigation into stuttering development: a longitudinal approach

The purpose of this study is to examine the relation between daily emotions and stuttering. A longitudinal design was used to evaluate changes in the relation between emotions and stuttering over the fall and spring semesters of the 2015-2016 school year. The study participant consisted of child who was three years old when enrolled in the study. The child’s caregiver provided daily information regarding the four greatest emotional events and associated emotional arousal and speech disfluency. Conversational samples of speech were collected on weekly visits to the clinic, which were transcribed and coded for speech disfluencies. It was hypothesized that emotional arousal would be related to the child’s stuttering. It was also hypothesized that routine would impact longitudinal change in emotional arousal and associated stuttering. Results showed that intensity of emotional arousal was predictive of parent-observed stuttering when emotion was negative. However, stuttering did not significantly change over the duration of the study, and change in routine was not related to longitudinal change in emotion and stuttering.