Implications of Effortful Control and Negative Affectivity in the Persistence and Recovery of Stuttering

Explores the effect that aspects of temperament, specifically effortful control and negative affectivity, have on the persistence and recovery of childhood stuttering. PSY 4999 - Honors Thesis - Walden, TedraThe present study investigated the differences in Negative Affectivity and Effortful Control in the presence and absence of stuttering. A Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) measured the stuttering-like disfluencies (SLDs) of 92 preschool-aged participants at two separate time points (i.e. time point 1 and time point 2). The participants were then divided into four stutter groups: children who did not stutter at either time point (CWNS), children who stuttered at both time points (Persistent), children who stuttered at time point 1 but did not stutter at time point 2 (Recovered), and children who did not stutter at time point 1 but stuttered at time point 2 (Transitional). Results indicated that at time point 1, both the Recovered and the Persistent group had significantly lower scores of Effortful Control on the Children’s Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ) than the CWNS group. Additionally, both the Persistent and the Transitional groups had significantly higher Negative Affectivity scores on the CBQ at time point 1 than at time point 2, but the other groups did not.Vanderbilt UniversityPsychologyCollege of Arts and ScienceThesis completed in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Honors Program in Psychological Science