NEW research [study](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1576681/full): *"The role of anticipation and neuroticism in developmental stuttering" (2025, May)* >"Emotions influence thoughts, evaluations, and decision-making. Stimuli with high emotional value may have a “priority” over neutral stimuli, capturing more attentional resources. This can result in cognitive biases: emotional stimuli that are irrelevant to the task can interfere with goal-directed behaviors, slowing reaction times and reducing response accuracies. >Cues with “negative” content were associated to an increase in “late positive potentials” associated with self-monitoring mechanisms. In addition, performance with “negative” stimuli was more error-rich than control tasks. Suggesting that for “negative” stimuli, heightened arousal was present (in comparison to “neutral” and/or “positive” cues). On turn, heightened arousal may interact with early stages of speech/language production, also due to an unbalanced focus on these cues. Importantly, it has been suggested that internally-(vs. externally-)directed focus may contribute to disrupt simple/automatic \[speech\] movements. >Stuttering anticipation is often related to the activity of the autonomic nervous system and/or to feelings of anxiety. Anticipation could be like an “alarm” bell that the brain would learn and exploit. >Findings showed that a ‘solo vs. chorus’ condition induces an increase in arousal parameters and a greater amount of dysfluencies. *\[****So, speaking alone elicits more arousal and dysfluencies than speaking in unison?!****\]* >Neuroticism is a personality trait characterized by elements such as anxiety, anger, depression, self-awareness, impulsivity, withdrawal, volatility, and/or vulnerability. This trait may predict emotional reactivity, i.e., the degree and manner in which a person reacts to specific stimuli, especially to the “negative” ones. Accordingly, individuals with high neuroticism levels are more likely to change their attitude following errors and are more sensitive to “negative” feedbacks. The current study found that adults who stutter scored significantly higher on neuroticism scales. Stuttering Anticipation can lead to emotional and behavioral responses (anxiety, avoidance, coping strategies). Stuttering anticipation is related to the consistent over-activation of the right prefrontal cortex, thus possibly interacting with neural systems that are part of the Default Mode Network." The research states "emotional stimuli that are irrelevant to the task can interfere with goal-directed behaviors". However, no matter how fearful and anxious we are when fearing a spider, it likely won't trigger stuttering if we speak alone. I think a better formulation would be that emotional stimuli (with its heightened arousal), once our subconscious links them (in that moment of speech execution) to the freeze response (or psychosomatic response) or "staying quiet or else" (for example, due to a change in their attitude following errors and being more sensitive to “negative” feedbacks), could then interfere with (1) goal-directed behaviors, and (2) neural systems. **Question**: Would you agree or can you resonate with this statement?