Information Processing Biases in Adults Who Stutter

Understanding attention patterns in stuttering can open important new directions for research and clinical intervention.

Dr. Naomi Eichorn was awarded $553,000 by the National Institute of Deafness and other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) through the R21 mechanism for her project Information processing biases in adults who stutter: Behavioral and eye-tracking indices of threat-related attention allocation.

The three-year project will explore the role of threat-related attentional biases in shaping psychological responses to stuttering in speakers who stutter. Using multiple behavioral tasks and eye tracking techniques which provide continuous measures of dynamic attentional processes over time, Eichorn will examine the extent to which stuttering is associated with preferential allocation of attention toward threatening stimuli. The study will clarify whether threat-related biases in adults who stutter are general in nature or specific to stuttering-related experiences and concerns. It will also examine whether attentional bias predicts individual differences in the way speakers react to their stuttering.

Understanding attention patterns in stuttering can open important new directions for research and clinical intervention. By characterizing patterns of attention bias, the study will pinpoint cognitive targets that can be reshaped through attention bias modification paradigms, helping to break cyclical interactions between personal stuttering experiences and emotional responses to these experiences.

For more on this project, contact Eichorn at neichorn@memphis.edu.