stuttering, also called Stammering, stammering or Dysphemia, dysphemiaspeech defect affecting the rhythm and fluency of speech and characterized by involuntary repetition of sounds or syllables and the intermittent blocking or prolongation of sounds, syllables, and words. Stutterers can predict 95 percent of the words over which they will stutter in reading aloud a given passage. Supposedly taking their cue from past difficulties, they anticipate difficulty with certain words, and the avoidance behaviour provoked in this way actually produces the stutteringThese disruptions alter the rhythm and fluency of speech and sometimes impede communication, with consequences on the affected individual’s confidence when speaking. About 1 percent of most populations stutter. The condition is most prevalent among children between ages three and eight. In Western countries stuttering is four times more common in boys than in girls.

Stutterers consistently have difficulty with certain types of words: those beginning with consonants, initial words in sentences, content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, ; as opposed to function words like , such as pronouns and prepositions), and words of several syllables. Since these are also the types of words that produce hesitation in normal speakers, there seems to be some link between stuttering and normal disfluency (pauses, repetition).

Although stuttering tends to reappear in some families, studies show that the slight hereditary bias is due to a neurological predisposition or to environmental factors rather than to a genetic trait. Stutterers show no organic defect, and the common idea that forcibly changing handedness causes stuttering is a misconception. Rather, any situation in which too much attention is paid to a child’s normal speech disfluency seems to produce the imperfections that are so much feared. Thus stuttering tends to appear when a child’s parents anxiously overreact to normal pauses and repetition—which may also explain the tendency of the stutterer to be an only child or to have no siblings close in age. Cultural attitudes toward fluency can also increase the likelihood of stuttering; e.g., the Igbo (Ibo) people of West Africa, who prize public-speaking ability, have a rate of stuttering almost three times the world average (about 1 percent of most populations stutter). The fact that five times as many boys as girls stutter in Western culture may be linked to greater performance pressure put on males.

In Roman times, stutterers were thought to be possessed by evil spirits that had to be exorcised. In the Middle Ages the tongue, thought to be the source of the problem, was tortured with hot irons and spices. Today we know that about 80 percent of stutterers recover with no treatment whatsoever, usually in early adulthood or adolescenceThe causes of stuttering are unclear, although various factors have been implicated. For example, stuttering tends to run in families, indicating that genetics may contribute in part to its development. Researchers suspect that persons who are genetically predisposed to stuttering may be more susceptible to environmental factors, such as stress or excitement, that trigger stuttering than persons who do not have a family history of the disorder.



Psychogenic stuttering is a rare condition that appears to occur almost exclusively in individuals who have experienced severe emotional trauma or who have a history of psychiatric illness. This form of stuttering is characterized by the rapid repetition of initial word sounds.


