Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine group and individual differences in attentional bias toward and away from socially threatening facial stimuli among adolescents who stutter and age- and sex-matched typically fluent controls. Method Participants included 86 adolescents (43 stuttering, 43 controls) ranging in age from 13 to 19 years. They completed a computerized dot-probe task, which was modified to allow for separate measurement of attentional engagement with and attentional disengagement from facial stimuli (angry, fearful, neutral expressions). Their response time on this task was the dependent variable. Participants also completed the Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents (SAS-A) and provided a speech sample for analysis of stuttering-like behaviors. Results The adolescents who stutter were more likely to engage quickly with threatening faces than to maintain attention on neutral faces, and they were also more likely to disengage quickly from threatening faces than to maintain attention on those faces. The typically fluent controls did not show any attentional preference for the threatening faces over the neutral faces in either the engagement or disengagement conditions. The two groups demonstrated equivalent levels of social anxiety that were both, on average, very close to the clinical cutoff score for high social anxiety, although degree of social anxiety did not influence performance in either condition. Stuttering severity did not influence performance among the adolescents who stutter. Conclusion This study provides preliminary evidence for a vigilance–avoidance pattern of attentional allocation to threatening social stimuli among adolescents who stutter.

中文翻译：

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口吃青少年的注意力偏差：警惕-回避效应的证据

目的本研究的目的是检查口吃青少年和年龄和性别匹配的典型流利对照青少年中对具有社会威胁的面部刺激的注意力偏向和远离的群体和个体差异。 方法参与者包括 86 名青少年（43 名口吃者，43 名对照组），年龄从 13 岁到 19 岁不等。他们完成了一项计算机化的点探针任务，该任务经过修改，可以单独测量面部刺激（愤怒、恐惧、中性表情）的注意力参与和注意力脱离。他们对此任务的响应时间是因变量。参与者还完成了青少年社交焦虑量表（SAS-A），并提供了用于分析口吃类行为的语音样本。 结果口吃的青少年更有可能快速接触威胁性面孔，而不是保持对中性面孔的注意力，而且他们也更有可能快速脱离威胁性面孔，而不是保持对这些面孔的注意力。在参与或脱离条件下，典型的流畅控制并没有表现出对威胁面孔相对于中性面孔的任何注意力偏好。两组的社交焦虑水平相当，平均而言，都非常接近高社交焦虑的临床临界分数，尽管社交焦虑的程度并不影响任何一种情况下的表现。口吃的严重程度并不影响口吃青少年的表现。 结论这项研究为口吃青少年对威胁性社会刺激的注意力分配的警惕-回避模式提供了初步证据。