Temperament Profiles and Their Association With Stuttering-Related Outcomes in a Clinical Cohort

Previous research on temperament in developmental stuttering has primarily treated emotional reactivity and self-regulation as separate constructs. Examining their interaction is likely to yield more comprehensive insights into their joint influence on stuttering-related outcomes. Therefore, this study examined how the interplay between emotional reactivity and self-regulation is reflected in differences in stuttering severity, speech attitude, levels of anxiety and depression, and the impact of stuttering.

A total of 322 younger (ages 3-8 years) and 468 older children (ages 9-15 years) who stutter were categorized into four temperament profiles based on dichotomization at the midpoint of scale scores for emotional reactivity and self-regulation, as reported in a parental temperament questionnaire. For younger children, an additional dichotomization was applied using U.K. population mean score. This procedure was conducted separately for positive and negative reactivity, each in relation to self-regulation, yielding four distinct temperament profiles per reactivity type (i.e., higher/lower reactivity × higher/lower self-regulation). Between-groups differences were investigated for stuttering severity, stuttering impact, speech attitude, and the level of anxiety/depression.

There were no differences between the temperamental profiles and the differing measures in young children using the scale midpoint dichotomization method. However, when using U.K. population mean dichotomization, temperament profiles continued to show no associations with stuttering severity or speech attitude but did reveal significant differences in stuttering impact, indicating that lower positive reactivity combined with lower self-regulation is linked to greater perceived impact among younger children who stutter. Older children and teens with higher positive reactivity and higher self-regulation had less impact, anxiety, and depression, whereas those with higher positive reactivity and lower self-regulation had a lower overt stuttering severity compared to most other temperament profiles; higher negative reactivity in combination with lower self-regulation was related to more impact compared to most other temperament profiles.

This is the first study to examine the interaction between reactivity and self-regulation and the relationship with several stuttering-related factors. These results suggest that the interplay between emotional reactivity and self-regulation does not appear to impact stuttering outcomes in early childhood but does during late childhood and early adolescence. The findings suggest that having higher positive reactivity and higher self-regulation temperamental profile has a protective role for older children in terms of their stuttering experience and that higher positive reactivity may serve as a protective factor for reduced self-regulatory abilities. Those who obtained higher negative reactivity scores experienced a greater impact of stuttering when this is combined with lower self-regulation, again suggesting that self-regulation exerts a protective role. These differences offer a clearer basis for understanding variability in the stuttering experience and provide insight into those children who may be at greater risk of an adverse experience.