Stammering or Stuttering
Stuttering, or stammering, is a speech disorder that is also known as diffluent speech. Stuttering specifically includes the following:
- An uneven rate of speech
- Halted or interrupted speech production, and
- Repeated words, syllables, and sounds
- Stuttering is a highly common phenomenon, affecting between 5 to 10% of all children.
- It mostly occurs in children between 2 and 6 years of age.
- While most children will not carry a stutter beyond childhood, 25% of children who don’t lose their stutter will be affected by it as adults.
- Intervening early can help a child stop stammering and nullify all chances of them carrying it into adulthood.
- Let’s take a deeper look into stuttering:
Causes
- The most common causes of stuttering or stammering include:
- Family dynamics
- Neurophysiology
- Issues in development during childhood
- A family history of stuttering
- Furthermore, injuries and trauma can also result in stuttering.
- Sustaining an injury to the brain from a stroke can cause stuttering.
- Similarly, severe emotional trauma can also cause stuttering.
- Stuttering is believed to run in families as the part of the brain that governs speech and language may be abnormally developed across generations.
- Children of parents who have stuttered usually stutter as well.
Signs and Symptoms
Three different types of stuttering can affect a person.
- Developmental stuttering occurs while a child is developing their speech. Their mouth may take time to build up their language abilities.
- The developmental type goes away without treatment.
- Neurogenic stuttering occurs when there are abnormalities between the brain’s signals and the nerves or muscles of the body.
- Psychogenic stuttering originates from the brain, specifically the part that regulates speech and learning.
The symptoms across all these types are the same, and they include:
- Frustration in trying to communicate
- Occasional refusal to speak
- Noticeable physical changes in the face, such as facial tics, extensive eye blinking, lip tremors, and increased tension in the upper face area
- Pausing or hesitation when starting to speak
- Interjections or extra sounds while speaking
- A tense voice
- Rearranging words while speaking
- Stretching out words with longer sounds
- Repetition whilst speaking
Often, children are not aware that they are stuttering and may get used to how they speak.
Diagnosis
- There is no invasive test to diagnose stuttering.
- The diagnosis can be made by a speech-language pathologist based on the symptoms exhibited by a person.
Treatment
- Most stuttering does not require treatment as children grow past the developmental stage and stop stuttering with time.
- Speech therapy is the most common treatment for other kinds of stuttering.
- Speech therapy can help with intonation and can also reduce interruptions while speaking.
- It gives a person the push they need to stop stuttering. It helps increase self-esteem and helps with pronunciation and enunciation.
- Beyond speech therapy, electronic devices such as voice recorders and hearing aids can also help.
- The former helps repeat what has been said and learn where the mistakes lie while hearing aids can help reduce background noise and increase focus.
- Beyond this, no specific medication is known to help with stuttering.