Purpose of the study: The main aim of the study was to investigate the attentional and inhibitory abilities and their underlying processes of children who stutter by using behavioural measurement and event-related potentials (ERP) in a visual Go/Nogo paradigm.
Methods: Participants were 11 children who stutter (CWS; mean age 8.1, age range 6.3-9.5 years) and 19 typically developed children (TDC; mean age 8.1, age range 5.8-9.6 years). They performed a visual Go/Nogo task with simultaneous EEG recording to obtain ERP responses.
Results: Results showed that CWS had longer N2 and P3 latencies in the Go condition compared to the TDC. In contrast, the groups did not differ significantly in the Nogo condition or behavioural measures.
Conclusions: Our findings did not confirm less efficient inhibitory control in CWS but suggest atypical attentional processing such as stimulus evaluation and response selection.
Educational objectives: The reader will be able to (a) describe recent findings on attention and inhibitory control in children who stutter, (b) describe the measurement of attentional processing, including inhibitory control, and (c) describe the findings on attentional processing in children who stutter as indexed by the event-related potentials in a visual Go/Nogo paradigm.
Keywords: Children; Event-related potential; Inhibitory control; Stimulus evaluation; Stuttering.
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