Department of Neurology & Sleep Disorders Research Center, School of Medicine, Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences, Kermanshah, Iran.
School of Education, Faculty of Primary Education, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece.
Laterality. 2020 Mar;25(2):127-149. doi: 10.1080/1357650X.2019.1621329. Epub 2019 May 30.
The causes of developmental stuttering, a neurodevelopmental communicative disorder, have not been elucidated to date. Neuroimaging studies suggest that atypical cerebral laterality could be one of such causal factors. Moreover, handedness, a behavioural index for cerebral laterality, has been linked to stuttering and recovery from it. However, findings are conflicting, possibly due to sample selection procedures, which typically rely on self-reported stuttering, and to the fact that handedness is typically assessed with regards to its direction rather than degree. We investigated the possible relationship between handedness and stuttering. This is the first study where children who stutter (CWS) were selected using clinical criteria as well as speech samples and where a non-Western population was studied. Findings from 83 CWS aged 3-9 years (mean = 6.43, SD = 1.84) and 90 age- and sex-matched children who do not stutter (mean = 6.45, SD = 1.71) revealed no differences in their hand preference scores as evaluated by parent-completed Edinburgh Handedness Inventory, for both direction and degree. The severity of stuttering was not found to correlate with the degree of handedness. We suggest that parents and professionals not treat left- or mixed-hand preference as a reason for concern with regards to stuttering.
发育性口吃的病因，一种神经发育性言语障碍，迄今尚未阐明。神经影像学研究表明，非典型大脑偏侧性可能是其中的一个病因。此外，惯用手，大脑偏侧性的行为指标，与口吃和口吃的恢复有关。然而，研究结果存在矛盾，可能是由于样本选择程序，这些程序通常依赖于自我报告的口吃，以及惯用手通常是根据其方向而不是程度来评估的。我们研究了惯用手和口吃之间可能存在的关系。这是第一项使用临床标准以及言语样本选择口吃儿童（CWS）的研究，也是第一项研究非西方人群的研究。对 83 名年龄在 3-9 岁（平均 6.43，标准差 1.84）的口吃儿童（CWS）和 90 名年龄和性别匹配的不口吃儿童（平均 6.45，标准差 1.71）的研究发现，他们的手偏好评分在父母完成的爱丁堡手性问卷中没有差异，无论是方向还是程度。口吃的严重程度与惯用手的程度无关。我们建议父母和专业人士不要将左手或混合手偏好视为对口吃的担忧的原因。
