title: Autonomic correlates of speech versus nonspeech tasks in children and adults.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To assess autonomic arousal associated with speech and nonspeech tasks in school-age children and young adults.
  
  
  METHODS
  Measures of autonomic arousal (electrodermal level, electrodermal response amplitude, blood pulse volume, and heart rate) were recorded prior to, during, and after the performance of speech and nonspeech tasks by twenty 7- to 9-year-old children and twenty 18- to 22-year-old adults.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Across age groups, autonomic arousal was higher for speech tasks compared with nonspeech tasks, based on peak electrodermal response amplitude and blood pulse volume. Children demonstrated greater relative arousal, based on heart rate and blood pulse volume, for nonspeech oral motor tasks than adults but showed similar mean arousal levels for speech tasks as adults. Children demonstrated sex differences in autonomic arousal; specifically, autonomic arousal remained high for school-age boys but not girls in a more complex open-ended narrative task that followed a simple sentence production task.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Speech tasks elicit greater autonomic arousal than nonspeech tasks, and children demonstrate greater autonomic arousal for nonspeech oral motor tasks than adults. Sex differences in autonomic arousal associated with speech tasks in school-age children are discussed relative to speech-language differences between boys and girls.
authors.forename: Hayley S
authors.initials: HS
authors.lastname: Arnold
authors.forename: Megan K
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: MacPherson
authors.forename: Anne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Smith
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000367:Age Factors; D001341:Autonomic Nervous System / Q000502:physiology*; D001810:Blood Volume; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006339:Heart Rate; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012737:Sex Factors; D013060:Speech / Q000502:physiology*; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D055815:Young Adult