A roundtable discussion entitled "Cluttering: Discussion of Issues Relevant to the Community," held at the 2025 Oxford Stuttering and Cluttering Research Conference, brought together individuals who clutter, clinicians, and researchers to examine key concerns related to the challenges of living with cluttering. Guided by the Three-Pronged Approach to the conceptualization of cluttering (Myers et al., 2018), which emphasizes the importance of lived experience in diagnosis and intervention, the session provided a collaborative dialogue among all stakeholders. Clutterers identified and explored core questions related to employment impact, perceived and internalized stigma, coping with negative emotional consequences, the development of support systems, avoidance behaviors and associated guilt, the use of speech management strategies, and perceived differences between cluttering and stuttering. Perspectives shared during the discussion, considered alongside emerging literature, informed three position statements relevant to the cluttering community. First, the lived experiences of individuals who clutter should be recognized as valid and essential evidence in research and clinical practice. Second, stigma and self-stigma must be explicitly addressed in assessment, intervention, and research. Third, cluttering presents unique characteristics and psychosocial concerns that distinguish it from stuttering and warrant differential consideration. These perspectives highlight the value of a shared approach that involves clutterers as true partners in research design, clinical services, and public education to ensure that professional efforts reflect the priorities and lived experiences of the community.

Children with language and speech disorders account for approximately 5%-12% of children have language and speech disorders globally. Understanding the cognitive abilities of these children is crucial for identifying how cognitive skills influence speech fluency, language production, and planning effective intervention programs. Subtle differences in cognitive performance have been noted to affect developmental language skills. Therefore, we aimed to compare the cognitive abilities of children with language impairments and stuttering to typically developing controls. Our study was conducted on 69 children. The children were divided into three groups. The first and second groups consisted of children with language/speech impairments and fluency disorders, whereas the third group consisted of typically developing peers. We used standardized methods to assess the children's speech, language, fluency, and cognitive skills. The results demonstrated that although children with language impairments and stuttering had IQ scores that fell within the normal range, their verbal IQ and working memory scores showed specific differences from their typically developing peers. These findings suggest that cognitive abilities should be assessed and monitored in children with communicative disorders, even when overall IQ scores fall within the average range. Subtle differences in cognitive skills may affect speech fluency and language development.

Developmental stuttering affects up to 11% of children globally, with around one-fifth developing a persistent lifelong stutter. Twin and family studies indicate a strong genetic contribution and comorbidity with other heritable traits. Despite efforts to investigate the common genetic architecture of stuttering, much of variation contributing to clinically ascertained stuttering, persistence and recovery remains uncharacterised.

Microhaplotypes (MHs) are informative forensic markers for degraded and mixed DNA because they combine short target regions, haplotypic diversity and stutter-free allele detection. However, degraded templates often generate reads that cover only part of an MH target. Discarding these partial reads may reduce the information available for mixture interpretation. We evaluated a single-primer extension-based MH massively parallel sequencing system (SPE-MH-MPS) for low-template DNA, simulated degraded DNA, two-person mixtures and degraded two-person mixtures. A 91-locus autosomal panel developed from Chinese Southern Han data was analyzed using three quantitative inputs: complete-read counts, flexible-read counts and flexible UMI counts. Flexible reading increased allele recovery in low-template and degraded samples. At a DNA input of 31.25 pg, the mean allele detection rate increased from 1.5% with complete reads to 20.0% with flexible reads. In simulated degraded samples, complete reads detected fewer than 3% of alleles, whereas flexible reads recovered 50.6-72.0%, 44.5-47.8% and 21.4-36.3% of alleles after 60, 120 and 180 min of degradation, respectively. In non-degraded two-person mixtures, flexible-read counts generated higher log10 likelihood ratios than complete-read counts (Wilcoxon p < 0.001). Flexible-read counts also showed smaller deviations from the theoretical minor-contributor proportions and higher genotype deconvolution accuracy. Similar trends were observed in degraded mixtures, although minor-contributor-specific allele recovery decreased when degradation and mixture imbalance occurred together. UMI purity filtering reduced reference-discordant reads, but UMI-based counts did not consistently outperform flexible-read counts. These results indicate that constrained flexible reading can recover informative partial MH signals and improve the interpretation of defined degraded two-person DNA mixtures.

In the field of forensic genetics, the discovery of new genetic markers and the development of rapid detection techniques are of great significance for the identification of biological samples. The compound genetic marker DIP-SNP (deletion/insertion polymorphism-single nucleotide polymorphism) offers distinct advantages, including high polymorphism, the absence of stutter peaks, and a low mutation rate, making it a promising tool for the analysis of DNA mixtures. However, DIP-SNP genotyping based on capillary electrophoresis typically requires two separate amplification reactions, resulting in complex and time-consuming procedures. In this study, sixteen DIP-SNP markers were selected to develop a five-color fluorescent multiplex panel based on the amplification refractory mutation system (ARMS) and fragment length discrepant allele specific polymerase chain reaction (FLDAS-PCR) principles, enabling simultaneous genotyping in a single-tube reaction. In a Han Chinese population from Hubei province (n = 165), the effective number of alleles (Ae) ranged from 2.2160 to 2.9827 with a mean value of 2.6376, and the cumulative power of discrimination (CPD) and combined probability of exclusion (CPE) values were 0.999999999963 and 0.99830236, respectively, indicating that this panel is informative for personal identification and parentage testing in the studied population. In DNA mixture analysis, this panel successfully detected the minor component in two-person DNA mixtures at a ratio of 1:20 under optimized laboratory conditions with purified DNA. Our results suggest that this panel may serve as an effective supplement to conventional STR analysis in individual identification and parentage testing, and shows potential practical value in analyzing imbalanced DNA mixtures.

Children with expressive language delay or stuttering conditions have an increased risk of behavior problems. However, the mechanism underlying this association is poorly understood. Studies show maternal sensitivity shapes the socioemotional development of typically developing children, yet little is known about this association in the context of children with speech and language conditions. To address this gap, we examined whether maternal sensitivity would be concurrently associated with children's behavior problems and prospectively predict changes in these problems over time. Forty Arab-speaking mothers and their preschool- and elementary-school-aged children (M age in months = 68.63, SD = 16.47; 10 females) diagnosed with expressive language delay or stuttering participated in this study. Maternal sensitivity was assessed globally during observed play interactions with the child and in specific moments of child difficulties with expression or stuttering, through mothers' self-reports of their reactions. Mothers reported their child's behavior problems at baseline and two years later. Controlling for the severity of children's speech or language conditions, maternal sensitivity was concurrently associated with fewer child behavior problems. Children's behavior problems increased over time, yet maternal sensitivity predicted a smaller increase, suggesting an attenuating effect on this general trend. These findings highlight the importance of addressing mother-child interactions in research and practice with families of children with speech and language conditions.

Differences in executive functioning associated with working memory and different components of attention including sustained, selective, divided and attentional switching have been reported in people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Traditional laboratory tasks have limited ecological validity, whereas existing virtual reality studies have focused mainly on sustained attention, with multi-attention-form assessment remaining relatively unexplored. Sixty-four participants (34 people with self-reported attention deficit hyperactivity traits and 30 neurotypical participants) were included. Participants were tested for stuttering, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder traits and phonological working memory and then completed 10 virtual reality tasks that measured all four forms of attention. The self-reported attention deficit hyperactivity disorder group showed significantly lower attention scores, higher stuttering scores and lower phonological working memory scores. Behavioural results from the virtual reality tasks revealed that this group differed in sustained attention. Lower accuracy, higher omission error rates and reduced sensitivity occurred in this group in the traditionally formatted task based on the continuous performance test (Task 2). Logistic regression showed that all measures, except for sensitivity in Task 2, significantly predicted group membership. Results from the questionnaires indicated that overall, all participants felt present and immersed in the tasks. Findings suggest that attentional differences are form-specific and mostly observed under sustained attention tasks. Virtual reality can be used as an ecologically valid tool for detecting form-specific attentional differences under real-life scenarios.

Animal forensic genetics plays a critical role in criminal investigations by providing crucial evidence through domestic animal individualization and wildlife species identification. While human forensic genetics benefits from standardized short tandem repeats (STR) genotyping systems, animal forensic applications encounter significant challenges, including the limited availability of validated STR markers, the prevalence of error-prone dinucleotide STRs (di-STRs), and insufficient integration of population data. To address these challenges, we developed pSTRminer, an integrated bioinformatic tool that automates genome-wide STR mining and polymorphism evaluation. By applying pSTRminer to domestic cattle (Bos taurus), we identified 775,444 STRs de novo from the reference genome and genotyped them using whole-genome sequencing data from 60 Chinese and 111 African cattle to evaluate polymorphism across diverse genetic backgrounds. This led to the development of the cattle STR database (CSDB), comprising loci with a genotyping success rate ≥ 40% and polymorphism information content (PIC) ≥ 0.5. Experimental validation of 30 randomly selected tetranucleotide STRs (tetra-STRs) and 33 di-STRs via next-generation sequencing in a local Chinese cattle population (n = 145) confirmed marker reliability. Although tetra-STRs had lower average polymorphism levels, they exhibited significantly lower stutter ratios (p < 0.05), providing a viable path for identifying discriminative markers with fewer artifacts. Systematic screening revealed that certain tetra-STRs could surpass di-STRs in polymorphism. In conclusion, pSTRminer provides a scalable framework for developing standardized STR panels, facilitating the identification of robust and informative markers in forensic applications.

Distant kinship testing remains a major challenge in forensic genetics, as the discrimination power provided by routine STR kits is often insufficient to resolve complex relationship scenarios. To address this limitation, we developed a novel pentameric STR panel, composed of five newly implemented highly polymorphic loci together with Penta E, intended to complement conventional markers in both kinship and criminal casework. A total of 304 DNA samples from Iberian individuals were genotyped to characterize the panel. The five novel markers showed high levels of polymorphism, with 18-30 alleles detected per locus, and exhibited discrimination power comparable to that of highly informative STRs such the SE33 and D12S391. The performance of the panel in kinship analysis was assessed through both simulations and real casework involving different genetic degrees of relatedness. When combined with established STR kits, the novel multiplex improved the resolution of kinship cases involving relatives up to second degree. Its applicability to criminal casework was also evaluated. Compared with conventional tetrameric STR systems, the pentameric loci showed lower stutter ratios, which may facilitate mixture interpretation. In addition, an allele-specific stutter threshold was established to improve discrimination between stutter peaks and true minor-contributor alleles in mixed DNA profiles. The high heterozygosity of the novel loci also contributed to a more accurate inference of the number of contributors in DNA mixtures. Finally, developmental and forensic validation studies, together with an optimized protocol for profiling degraded and low-template DNA samples, confirmed the suitability of the panel for routine forensic applications.