Understanding Stuttering

Perspective

• Description of stuttering makes it seem like a complicated problem that takes a long time to learn about
• It is true that you could spend a lifetime and still not know everything there is to know about stuttering
• Helping people who stutter does not require complete understanding

The Words We Use

• "Disfluency" denotes interruptions of speech, which may be normal or abnormal
• Pauses, repetitions, and other hesitations in typical speakers are also instances of disfluency
• "Typical disfluency" means speech hesitancies are unequivocally not stuttering

Overview of the Disorder

• Stuttering is found worldwide across all cultures and races
• Occupation, intelligence, and income are not factors, it affects both sexes and people of all ages
• Genes may cause stuttering, something is inherited and makes it more likely a child will stutter

General notes

• Age-old problems may have origins in how brains evolved to produce speech and language
• In some children, it is triggered when they try to talk using their just-emerging speech skills
• Individual brain structure and function, learning patterns, personality, and temperament determine many variations and manifestations
• Stuttering provides lessons on human nature, responses that stuttering provokes in cultures worldwide reflect how humans deal with differences

Key Terms

• Adaptation is the tendency for speakers to stutter less and less when repeatedly reading a passage to a point
• Anticipation is an individual's ability to predict words or sounds they will stutter on
• Attitude is a feeling that becomes a pervasive part of a person's beliefs
• Avoidance behavior is a speaker's attempt to prevent stuttering, word-based avoidances include interjections like "uh" before a stuttered word
• Block is an inappropriate stoppage of air or voice flow, often with articulator movement
• Consistency is the tendency for speakers to stutter on the same words when reading a passage multiple times
• Core behaviors are stuttering's basic speech behaviors: repetition, prolongation, and block
• Developmental stuttering is the common form developing in childhood, different from neurological events, trauma, or emotional stress
• Disfluency is an interruption of speech, like repetitions, hesitations, or sound prolongations
• Escape behavior is a speaker's attempts to terminate a stutter and finish the word, occurring during stuttering
• Fluency means effortless flow of speech
• Heterogeneity means differences among disorder types
• The index of how many people have stuttered at some time in their lives is incidence
• A normal disfluency is an interruption of speech in a typically developing individual
• Prevalence indicates how many people have a disorder over a limited time
• Prolongation is a disfluency where sound or airflow continues, but movement of articulators is stopped
• Repetition means a sound, syllable, or word is repeated
• Secondary behaviors are a speaker's reactions to repetitions, prolongations, and blocks to end or avoid them
• Reactions may start as struggle but become learned patterns, divided into escape and avoidance behaviors