Neville W. Hennessey

Social anxiety and the severity and typography of stuttering in adolescents

UNLABELLED The present study examined the relationship between anxiety, attitude toward daily communication, and stuttering symptomatology in adolescent stuttering. Adolescents who stuttered (n=19) showed significantly higher levels of trait, state and social anxiety than fluent speaking controls (n=18). Trait and state anxiety was significantly associated with difficulty with communication in daily situations for adolescents who stutter, but not for controls. No statistically significant associations were found between anxiety and measures of communication difficulty, and the severity or typography of stuttering surface behaviours. These results highlight some of the psychosocial concomitants of chronic stuttering in adolescence, but challenge the notion that anxiety plays a direct mediating role in stuttering surface behaviours. Rather, the results suggest stuttering is a disorder that features psychosocial conflict regardless of its surface features. EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES The reader will be able to: (1) summarise findings from previous studies with regards to stuttering and anxiety; (2) identify the sub-types of anxiety that may impact on the individual who stutters; and (3) discuss the clinical implications of the results with regards to working with adolescents who stutter.

Speeded Verbal Responding in Adults Who Stutter: Are There Deficits in Linguistic Encoding?.

UNLABELLED Linguistic encoding deficits in people who stutter (PWS, n=18) were investigated using auditory priming during picture naming and word vs. non-word comparisons during choice and simple verbal reaction time (RT) tasks. During picture naming, PWS did not differ significantly from normally fluent speakers (n=18) in the magnitude of inhibition of RT from semantically related primes and the magnitude of facilitation from phonologically related primes. PWS also did not differ from controls in the degree to which words were faster than non-words during choice RT, although PWS were slower overall than controls. Simple RT showed no difference between groups, or between words and non-words, suggesting differences in speech initiation time do not explain the choice RT results. The findings are consistent with PWS not being deficient in the time course of lexical activation and selection, phonological encoding, and phonetic encoding. Potential deficits underlying slow choice RTs outside of linguistic encoding are discussed. EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES The reader will be able to (1) describe possible relationships between linguistic encoding processes and speech motor control difficulties in people who stutter; (2) explain the role of lexical priming tasks during speech production in evaluating the efficiency of linguistic encoding; (3) describe the different levels of processing that may be involved in slow verbal responding by people who stutter, and identify which levels could be involved based on the findings of the present study.

Parenting styles and attachment in school-aged children who stutter

UNLABELLED Parental input has been described as influential in early childhood stuttering yet the exact nature of this influence remains equivocal. The present study aimed to examine whether quantitative measures of parenting styles, parent and peer attachment patterns, and parent- and self-reported child behaviour could differentiate between school-aged children who stutter (CWS) (n=10) and their fluent peers (n=10). In addition, qualitative individual semi-structured interviews with all CWS were conducted to gain insight into their life experiences and reflections in relation to stuttering. The interviews were classified into ancillary themes of school, peers and parents. Quantitative findings revealed that CWS perceived their parents with significantly lower attachment, particularly in relation to trust, and parents of CWS perceived their children with significantly higher maladjustments than fluent counterparts. Qualitative themes emerged pertaining to attitudes, perceptions and relationships with teachers, peers and parents, with consistent experiences of teasing and bullying reported as a consequence of the stutter. The majority of participants recounted frustration with the nature in which their parents attempted to remediate their stuttering. Collectively, these findings highlight imperative management considerations for school-aged CWS and their parents. The usefulness of quantitative and qualitative research paradigms is also emphasised. LEARNING OUTCOMES The reader will be able to: (1) identify themes associated with the impact a childhood stutter has on parent and peer relationships; (2) identify how the quality of the parent child relationship is influenced by parenting styles and attachment; and (3) discuss the clinical implications of the results for children who stutter and their families.

Anxiety and speaking in people who stutter: An investigation using the emotional Stroop task

UNLABELLED People with anxiety disorders show an attentional bias towards threat or negative emotion words. This exploratory study examined whether people who stutter (PWS), who can be anxious when speaking, show similar bias and whether reactions to threat words also influence speech motor planning and execution. Comparisons were made between 31 PWS and 31 fluent controls in a modified emotional Stroop task where, depending on a visual cue, participants named the colour of threat and neutral words at either a normal or fast articulation rate. In a manual version of the same task participants pressed the corresponding colour button with either a long or short duration. PWS but not controls were slower to respond to threat words than neutral words, however, this emotionality effect was only evident for verbal responding. Emotionality did not interact with speech rate, but the size of the emotionality effect among PWS did correlate with frequency of stuttering. Results suggest PWS show an attentional bias to threat words similar to that found in people with anxiety disorder. In addition, this bias appears to be contingent on engaging the speech production system as a response modality. No evidence was found to indicate that emotional reactivity during the Stroop task constrains or destabilises, perhaps via arousal mechanisms, speech motor adjustment or execution for PWS. EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES The reader will be able to: (1) explain the importance of cognitive aspects of anxiety, such as attentional biases, in the possible cause and/or maintenance of anxiety in people who stutter, (2) explain how the emotional Stroop task can be used as a measure of attentional bias to threat information, and (3) evaluate the findings with respect to the relationship between attentional bias to threat information and speech production in people who stutter.

Retrospective parent report of early vocal behaviours in children with suspected Childhood Apraxia of Speech (sCAS)

Parents of children with suspected Childhood Apraxia of Speech (sCAS, n = 20), Specific Language Impairment (SLI, n = 20), and typically developing speech and language skills (TD, n = 20) participated in this study, which aimed to quantify and compare reports of early vocal development. Via a questionnaire, parents reported on their childs early babbling and vocalizations, along with other developmental milestones. Consistent with previous anecdotal reports and theoretical predictions, the sCAS children were reported to be significantly less vocal, less likely to babble, later in the emergence of first words and later in the emergence of two-word combinations than the TD children. However, on many (but not all) of the items, the SLI children were reported similarly to the sCAS group. Notable exceptions where the sCAS group differed significantly to the SLI group were with the percentage of children reported to have babbled and the reported age of emergence of two-word combinations. The results support previous anecdotal clinical suggestions relating to children with CAS but highlight the need for longitudinal studies to analyse speech and language trajectories over time.

The Locus of Naming Difficulties in Children with Dyslexia: Evidence of Inefficient Phonological Encoding.

Twenty-four children with dyslexia (aged 7;7 to 12;1) and twenty-four age-matched controls named pictures aloud while hearing nonsense syllables either phonologically related (i.e., part of) or unrelated to the target picture name. Compared with controls, dyslexics had slower reaction times overall and, for low frequency items, the degree of facilitation from phonologically related sound segments relative to unrelated segments was proportionally greater. Within the dyslexic group, phonological facilitation was greater and picture naming speed slower for poorer compared with better readers. Phonological facilitation and picture naming speed was unrelated to reading ability in the normal readers. The results suggest that phonological encoding during speech production is less efficient in some children with dyslexia and that hearing part of the target word strongly facilitates this process. The findings are consistent with the hypothesis that dyslexia can arise from poorly specified output phonological representations.

The role of sub-lexical orthography in naming: a performance and acoustic analysis.

Two experiments examined whether the duration of naming is sensitive to variables that influence pre-production processes. In Experiment 1 word naming produced longer durations than picture naming. Experiment 2 replicated this effect for low frequency items, but not for high frequency items. The results indicate that naming duration increases when conditions are likely to involve sub-lexical orthographic to phonological translation. The results are inconsistent with the proposition that input and output involve discrete or distinct information processing stages in naming where the whole response is planned in advance of response initiation. Rather, it is claimed that sub-lexical information about a printed words pronunciation can be used to initiate a naming response before the whole response is fully prepared. The implications for models of word naming and the role of suprasegmental factors in naming are discussed.

Early Development in Infants at Risk of Childhood Apraxia of Speech: A Longitudinal Investigation

This study examined early features of the heritable phenotype associated with childhood apraxia-of-speech (CAS). We compared speech and language development from 9 to 24 months of age in eight children at familial risk of CAS to that of eight infants with no such family history. At-risk infants scored lower on expressive language, speech development, and fine motor skills. Results support a broad, heritable verbal trait deficit for children at risk of CAS. Single case analyses showed poor prelinguistic speech development can dissociate from emerging receptive language and conceptualization skills, consistent with a deficit originating in speech motor control.

Verbal repetition skill in language impaired children: Evidence of inefficient lexical processing?

Speeded verbal repetition of spoken words in simple and primed conditions was used to examine lexical processing deficits in children with specific language impairment (SLI). During simple verbal repetition, children with SLI (n = 18) were slower at repeating abstract verbs compared to concrete verbs. This same effect was not observed for nouns. Age matched typically developing (TD) children (n = 18) showed no effect of concreteness for either verbs or nouns. During primed verbal repetition the children heard prime-target word pairs (e.g., lion-tiger) on each trial. Semantically related primes speeded verbal repetition for the TD but not SLI group, suggesting inefficient spreading activation within lexical semantics for children with SLI. Phonologically related primes (e.g., tiny) slowed verbal repetition of the target (e.g., tiger) in both groups, suggesting children with SLI were similar to their age-matched peers in lexical phonological competition. The results are generally supportive of graded deficits in lexical processing skill in SLI consistent with connectionist accounts, and approaches to therapy that combine semantic and phonological dimensions at the word level.

Community-based early intervention for language delay: a preliminary investigation

BACKGROUND A trial parent-focused early intervention (PFEI) programme for children with delayed language development is reported in which current research evidence was translated and applied within the constraints of available of clinical resources. The programme, based at a primary school, was run by a speech-language pathologist with speech-language pathology students. AIM To investigate the changes in child language development and parent and child interactions following attendance at the PFEI. METHODS & PROCEDURES Eighteen parents and their children attended six, weekly group sessions in which parents were provided with strategies to maximize language learning in everyday contexts. Pre- and post-programme assessments of vocabulary size and measures of parent-child interaction were collected. OUTCOME & RESULTS Parents and children significantly increased their communicative interactions from pre- to post-treatment. Childrens expressive vocabulary size and language skills increased significantly. Large-effect sizes were observed. CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS The positive outcomes of the intervention programme contribute to the evidence base of intervention strategies and forms of service delivery for children at risk of language delay.