Causes of Stuttering

Most folks experience an exasperating incident when, while trying to grasp a word or idea, our tongues trip or stall over the beginning of it and we stutter and stammer to vocalize our thought before it flies out of mind. When such an experience becomes more frequent than incidental, it is classified as the speech disorder, dysphemia or stuttering. In the UK, the disorder is called stammering. Although we know when stuttering is caused, why we stutter is yet to be clearly defined.

Possible Causes of Stuttering

At one time, it was believed that stuttering was primarily a nervous disorder or caused by mental or emotional problems, but today we know that this type of stuttering, called psychogenic stuttering, is the exception rather than the rule. More often, psychological problems are caused by stuttering rather than the reverse.

Children who stutter are no more likely to have emotional problems than children who do not. This is significant because stuttering is most common in children who are between the ages of two and six-years-old. Researchers believe that this developmental stuttering occurs when a child has the impulse to speak before he or she finds the “right” word. Developmental stuttering is normally outgrown as the child matures.

Because many children who stutter also have a family member that stutters or did stutter, there is reason to believe that some stuttering is hereditary. However, no explicit gene has been linked to genetic stuttering.

Neurogenic stuttering is often the result of a stroke or other injury to the brain. Neurogenic stuttering occurs when the brain fails to coordinate the different elements that must fit together for fluent speech.

The Precision of Fluency

Fluent speech is a remarkable phenomenon where the brain translates thought processes to a specific sequence and coordination of physical elements that result in verbal communication. Beginning with respiration, a breath is forced into the larynx where vocal chords touch in precision, relaxing or contracting as needed to release the breath to make sounds (phonation). Next, these sounds are articulated, which means they travel through the nose (for soft sounds like m, n, and ng) or to the mouth where lips, tongue, palate, jaw, and teeth precisely modify them to make the syllables and words of language.

Stuttering is often mistakenly confused with rapid, irregular speech, which is called “cluttering”, and spasmodic dysphonia, which is another speech disorder that is characterized by breaks in voice and caused by involuntary muscle movements of the vocal chords.

Stuttering is caused when certain sounds are repeated, prolonged, or blocked, interrupting the normal flow of speech.

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