Neurodevelopment for syntactic processing distinguishes childhood stuttering recovery versus persistence

Area of Science:

• Neurodevelopmental disorders
• Speech-language pathology
• Cognitive neuroscience

Background:

• Developmental stuttering is a neurodevelopmental disorder affecting speech-motor coordination.
• Early language development influences stuttering onset and recovery.
• Understanding neural processing differences can illuminate stuttering persistence.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate neural indices of language processing in children who stutter.
• To differentiate between children with persistent stuttering and those who recovered.
• To associate language processing differences with stuttering persistence.

Main Methods:

• Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 31 children (6-7 years old).
• Participants included children who do not stutter (CWNS), recovered (CWS-Rec), and persistent (CWS-Per) stutterers.
• ERPs were elicited by semantic and syntactic violations in English and Jabberwocky sentences.

Main Results:

• Semantic and syntactic processing in English sentences did not differentiate groups.
• Syntactic violations in Jabberwocky sentences elicited different ERPs in persistent stutterers (N400-like) versus others (P600).
• Persistent stutterers showed atypical neural responses to syntactic structures without semantic context.

Conclusions:

• Neural patterns in syntactic processing, not semantic, distinguish persistent stuttering.
• Reduced semantic context impacts syntactic processing in persistent stutterers.
• Immature neural mechanisms for syntactic structure processing may be present in persistent stutterers.