Individual differences in attentional control predict working memory capacity in adults who stutter.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive psychology
• Neuroscience
• Speech and language sciences

Background:

• Previous research indicates working memory (WM) differences in people who stutter (PWS), particularly with phonologically complex stimuli.
• This study investigates WM in adults who stutter, considering linguistic demands, attentional control, and processing requirements.

Purpose of the Study:

• To further specify WM differences in adults who stutter.
• To examine the influence of linguistic complexity and attentional control on WM performance.

Main Methods:

• Forty adults who stutter and 42 adults who do not stutter participated.
• Participants completed the Attention Network Test (ANT) and three complex span WM tasks (OSPAN, Rotation Span, Symmetry Span).
• All complex span tasks were dual-tasks with varying linguistic content.

Main Results:

• WM capacities in adults who stutter mirrored linguistic content complexity across tasks.
• Significant WM capacity differences emerged in the Operation Span (OSPAN) task, the most linguistically demanding.
• Attentional control significantly predicted WM capacity on the OSPAN in adults who stutter.

Conclusions:

• WM differences exist between adults who stutter and do not stutter, even with simpler stimuli in dual-task conditions.
• Stronger executive control of attention in adults who stutter leads to WM capacity more comparable to non-stuttering adults on the OSPAN.