Stuttering Speech Facts
- Stuttering, a speech disorder causing a person’s speech to be broken up or less fluid.
- 5% of children experience stuttering for at least a portion of their childhood, this time varies from weeks to months, even years.
- From this 5%, 1% of children will continue to live their life with some sort of long-term stuttering.
- These numbers translate to 1 in every 1 hundred people across the globe. 70 million people worldwide experience stuttering speech and 3 million within the US admit to having stuttering speech.
- Both biological and neurological this condition can be caused by 4 triggers, one of which is genetics. Stuttering Speech tends to run in families, researchers have identified genes that cause stuttering.
What is Stuttering Speech
Commonly referred to as ‘Stuttering’ or ‘Stammering’, stuttering is a disorder affecting the sounds, syllables, causing words to be repeated or even prolonged and any other auditory effects disrupting the flow of speech. In most cases, these disruptions go hand-in-hand with other behavioral struggles, including but not limited to lip tremors and eye blinks. Of course, like most neurological disorders the symptoms of stuttering speech can range widely through the day. Moments throughout the day where one with stuttering engages with others may result in a more noticeable stutter, while moments aloud to themselves may reduce the severity if even for a short while.
Types of Stuttering Speech
Stuttering speech can be linked to 3 different forms of stuttering.
- developmental stuttering
- neurogenic stuttering
- psychogenic stuttering
Developmental Stuttering
As seen above nearly 3 million of those in the US have been diagnosed with stuttering speech. Affecting those of all ages, stuttering speech often occurs during childhood as they begin to develop speech and language skills. This is referred to as developmental stuttering and is the most common form of stuttering. Most scientists, and some clinician tie stuttering back to when a child’s speech and language abilities are unable to match their verbal demands. This form of stuttering has also been found to run within families. Researchers at NIDCD were able to isolate three genes that link to the cause of stuttering in 2010.
Neurogenic stuttering
Often seen in the later stages of life, this particular type of stuttering can be attributed to head trauma, strokes, and various other brain-related injuries. With this class of stuttering, one’s brain has difficulty coordinating and differentiating the various components involved in speaking caused by signaling issues between the brain, nerves, and muscles.
Psychogenic stuttering
While rare, this form of stuttering was once the most heavily diagnosed until the perspective of stuttering speech transformed leading to the discovery of those mentioned above. Emotional trauma and problems with reasoning or thought tend to be the cause associated with this form of stuttering.