Behavioral inhibition and childhood stuttering

•Behavioral inhibition (BI) of preschool-age CWS and CWNS was assessed by measuring the latency to their sixth spontaneous comment during conversation with an unfamiliar experimenter.•No difference in BI was found between preschool-age CWS and CWNS as a group.•However, in the extreme BI groups, there were more CWS in higher BI and fewer CWS in lower BI group than CWNS.•CWS’ BI correlates with their frequency of stuttered disfluencies.

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to assess the relation of behavioral inhibition to stuttering and speech/language output in preschool-age children who do (CWS) and do not stutter (CWNS).MethodParticipants were preschool-age (ages 36–68 months), including 26 CWS (22 males) and 28 CWNS (13 males). Participants’ behavioral inhibition (BI) was assessed by measuring the latency to their sixth spontaneous comment during conversation with an unfamiliar experimenter, using methodology developed by Kagan, Reznick, and Gibbons (1989). In addition to these measures of BI, each participant's stuttered and non-stuttered disfluencies and mean length of utterance (in morphemes) were assessed.ResultsAmong the more salient findings, it was found that (1) there was no significant difference in BI between preschool-age CWS and CWNS as a group, (2) when extremely high versus low inhibited children were selected, there were more CWS with higher BI and fewer CWS with lower BI when compared to their CWNS peers, and (3) more behaviorally inhibited CWS, when compared to less behaviorally inhibited CWS, exhibited more stuttering.ConclusionsFindings are taken to suggest that one aspect of temperament (i.e., behavioral inhibition) is exhibited by some preschool-age CWS and that these children stutter more than CWS with lower behavioral inhibition. The present results seem to support continued study of the association between young children's temperamental characteristics and stuttering, the diagnostic entity (i.e., CWS versus CWNS), as well as stuttering, the behavior (e.g., frequency of stuttered disfluencies).Educational objectives: After reading this article, the reader will be able to: (a) summarize the salient empirical findings in the extant literature with regard to the association between temperament and childhood stuttering; (b) describe the concept of behavioral inhibition (BI) as well as the methods to measure BI; and (c) discuss the association between behavioral inhibition and childhood stuttering in preschool-age children.