Comparison of Visual and Auditory Working Memory in Adults Who Do and Do Not Stutter

Introduction: Developmental stuttering is a neurological disorder that commonly manifests as a motor problem. Cognitive theories, however, hold that poorly developed cognitive abilities are the origins of stuttering. The purpose of this study was to investigate the Comparison of Visual and Auditory Working Memory in Adults Who Do and Do Not Stutter.

Materials & Methods: In this research, stutter adult (N=60)and no stutter adult (N=60), aged between 17-37 years, with no history of mental and sensory, lingual, hearing, production, motor, and psychiatry defects, were recruited. To assess the Visual Working Memory abilities of the participants, N-Back test was used. The Wechsler test (Digit span) was used to evaluate the Auditory working memory abilities. SPSS software (ver.25) was used for statistical evaluation. The criterion for statistical significance was defined as P-value≤0.05.

Results: The results of the present study revealed which No between-group differences were revealed in the digit naming task. But significant difference was between two groups only during 2 back task. Analysis showed that stutter adult had more false alarms, which might have resulted because of the anxiety in responding, due to increased attentional demands, which is in turn reflected as working memory deficits during the difficult task.

Conclusion: Adult who stutter (AWS) perform poorly than Adult who do not stutter (AWNS), even though their performance is within the range of what is considered to be typical.