Emotion-related regulation strategy use in preschool-age children who stutter

Past findings indicate the quality and quantity of emotion regulation often differs between preschool-age children who stutter (CWS) and children who do not stutter (CWNS). The purpose of this study was to identify whether specific emotion-related regulatory strategy types differ between preschool-age CWS and CWNS during a temptation task.

Participants were 13 CWS and 13 CWNS between 3;2 and 5;7 (years;months), matched for gender and age (+/- 6 months). Participants completed a Forbidden Toy paradigm, a resistance to temptation task, in which the children were asked to refrain from touching a toy. Types of emotion-related regulation, including (1) verbal regulation, (2) behavioral regulation, and (3) attentional regulation, were behaviorally coded during the temptation task.

A higher proportion of the CWNS (92%) failed to resist the temptation to touch the toy than CWS (48%). Additionally, a higher proportion of the CWS (23%), compared to CWNS (0%), presented with signs of distress, resulting in their task ending prematurely. Limited differences were detected in the types of emotion-related regulatory strategies used by CWS, or the frequency of those strategies. CWNS, compared to the CWS, used more approach-related behavioral strategies.

Interpretations of these findings must be mitigated by the observation that a higher proportion of CWS than CWNS demonstrated distress during the paradigm, suggesting a need for further research into the interplay between emotional reactivity and emotion regulation for preschool-age CWS.