Highlighting Links Between ADHD and Stuttering

As she pondered her career future in her final years of high school, Peachtree City, Georgia, native Hope Hartley’s plans always included music. A classically trained pianist, she was sure her eventual major would somehow be musically inclined.
Instead, Hartley ended up majoring in speech, language and hearing sciences at Auburn, but she’s never lost her love of rhythm. In fact, rhythm — and how certain groups such as those with ADHD and people who stutter perceive it — eventually became the center of her research as the recipient of a 2023-2024 undergraduate research fellowship. She is continuing that research this fall at Auburn as a graduate student in speech language pathology.
“When I started my studies, I came up with a list of research topics combining music and speech pathology and began asking professors to work with me,” Hartley said. “I met with my eventual mentor, Dr. Gregory Spray, and he told me about a study he wanted to conduct that combined rhythm and speech pathology. I was immediately interested.”
People who stutter are reported to exhibit rhythm and timing deficits compared to individuals who do not. In fact, previous studies have shown that adults who stutter, as a group, have more difficulty discriminating complex rhythms, but not with simple rhythm discrimination.
Interestingly, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is also characterized by deficits in perceptual and motor timing, which has also been reported in stuttering. Thus, Hartley and Spray theorized, examining rhythm perception might reveal additional similarities between ADHD and stuttering.
Although the study is not yet complete, the results were generally as expected. Regarding rhythm discrimination in people who have ADHD, the results of the study showed the complex rhythm discrimination of people with ADHD was extremely similar to that of people who stutter.
“We have not yet completed the study, so we are waiting to run more statistics once we have more data,” noted Hartley, “I am also interested to see how other factors influence the results — such as medications taken, hours of sleep, amount of caffeine consumed etc.”
Equally important, she added that her undergraduate project has given her new confidence as a researcher and presenter. “I came into the study feeling as though I had no skills to adequately create a research project, especially one I would present on multiple occasions,” said Hartley, who has displayed a poster on her research at the Speech and Hearing Association of Alabama’s annual conference as well as the Auburn Research Symposium.
“But Dr. Spray showed confidence in me every step of the way,” she added. “He taught me how to create the study, run participants and present my poster. None of this would have been possible without his unending help.”