Saturday, March 10, 2012

Emerging topics from Antwerp, Autonomic arousal: Arnold finds nothing.

Hayley Arnold showed us research she conducted with MacPherson on the autonomic arousal in pws as compared to fluent subjects. We know that autonomic arousal may negatively impact speech motor control. So maybe pws have a higher arousal and so this might increase stuttering or might prevent them from recovering.

She did not find any significant differences between children who stutter and those who don't for different tasks elicitating autonomic arousal. Also, arousal seems to start BEFORE stuttering events. I don't find this surprising at all. Kids are getting anxious because they have to speak and then this makes their stuttering worse...

So CONGRATULATIONS for the courage of presenting NULL results! Signs of great science! Watch out those who always find something... :-)

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