by Hannah Russell

Created on: May 14, 2010

Though most of us do not stutter, many of us have at least some contact with some who does, or did, stutter.  The question that people who stutter and people who hear someone else stuttering ask alike is “why?”  The answer is “We don’t know.”   There are however, several theories as to why people stutter. 

One theory that is mostly retired is the learning theory. All children are disfluent or incorrect in speech at times.  They talk fast, they fish for the right words, they do not always use the right consonants and their syntax is sometimes all over the place.  That is all part of learning language. The learning theory is that some parents correct their children so much when they are disfluent or incorrect in their speech, that the children become anxious about their speech.  They are thinking too hard about speaking, and that leads to stuttering.

In many cultural representations of stutterers, the cause is all in their heads. This used to be the prominent belief.  It used to be believed that stutterers stutter because they have an underlying psychological anxiety or self-esteem insecurity.  This theory is similar in some ways to the learning theory.  The difference is that the psychological theory holds that the anxieties are because of anxiety disorders, and not because of what their parents did.  There is some evidence to this theory, as children who experienced a death of a first-degree relative before or during linguistic development are statistically more likely to stutter.  Furthermore, someone who stutters will usually stutter more in stressful or demanding situations.  All the same, over the years, this theory has been pushed farther and farther into the background.  Psychotherapy has been mostly ineffective in resolving stutters, and psychological evaluation has shown that the majority of stutterers do not experience symptoms or characteristics of personality or anxiety disorders.

One theory that is rapidly gaining support is that stuttering is genetic.  Children who have first-degree relatives who stutter or did stutter are three times more likely to stutter than other children.  In the past few years, several genes have been isolated which exhibit evidence for being responsible for stuttering.  However, adoption studies and twin studies have not been conclusive enough to determine that these genes will exhibit themselves without

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