In Film, Stuttering Symptoms Reflect Current Research
Dispelling longstanding misconceptions that the underlying causes of stuttering are language problems or psychological problems like anxiety or trauma, researchers say stuttering is really a speech-production problem: a snag in the cascade of steps that our brains and bodies undertake to move the proper muscles to produce words.
“People who stutter have motor difficulties in producing fluent speech,” said Luc De Nil, a speech-language pathologist at the University of Toronto. “They don’t have difficulty developing words or syntax, although they may process language differently. They have difficulty with efficient coordination of motor movements, and speech is such a high-demand fine-motor skill that requires extremely fast sequencing and timing.”
Speaking involves brain areas responsible not only for language, but for hearing, planning, emotion, breathing and movement of the jaw, lips, tongue and neck. Anne Smith, a stuttering expert at Purdue University, said that in stutterers, “the generals in the brain, who control soldiers which are the muscles, aren’t sending out the right signals to the soldiers, so they just get all mixed up and run around.”
Stuttering, which affects about 5 percent of children, usually begins between age 2 and 6. While about 50 percent of stutterers have family members who stuttered, it is so far impossible to know who will develop it.
One of the disorder’s most intriguing characteristics, scientists now say, is that a child exhibits no signs of the disorder until it strikes, usually when talking becomes more complicated
@FiorenzaMella
“People who stutter have motor difficulties in producing fluent speech,” said Luc De Nil, a speech-language pathologist at the University of Toronto. “They don’t have difficulty developing words or syntax, although they may process language differently. They have difficulty with efficient coordination of motor movements, and speech is such a high-demand fine-motor skill that requires extremely fast sequencing and timing.”
Speaking involves brain areas responsible not only for language, but for hearing, planning, emotion, breathing and movement of the jaw, lips, tongue and neck. Anne Smith, a stuttering expert at Purdue University, said that in stutterers, “the generals in the brain, who control soldiers which are the muscles, aren’t sending out the right signals to the soldiers, so they just get all mixed up and run around.”
Stuttering, which affects about 5 percent of children, usually begins between age 2 and 6. While about 50 percent of stutterers have family members who stuttered, it is so far impossible to know who will develop it.
One of the disorder’s most intriguing characteristics, scientists now say, is that a child exhibits no signs of the disorder until it strikes, usually when talking becomes more complicated
@FiorenzaMella
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