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From: Greg Snyder
Date: 04 Oct 2009
Time: 00:42:34 -0500
Remote Name: 207.68.248.51
To be honest, I'm not sure it is. We just don't know enough about stuttering...so we're making up narratives as we go along. The data strongly suggests a genetic component. The data also strongly suggests a neurological component. So far, so good, right? The problem comes in where there are situations that our data and narratives cannot account: For example, if one identical twin stutters (i.e., monozygotic twins), the data suggests a 90% likelihood that the other twin will stutter as well. (As well they should, they share the same exact genetics.) But about that other 10% that recovers? We can't account for this--other than to shrug our shoulders and say, "Well, there's apparently some environmental factors involved w/ recovery that we do not understand." So my official unofficial answer is to suggest that people say stuttering has a multi-factorial cause because we're creating narratives to try and explain the phenomenon as we go along. In other words, we simply do not know enough to be specific about it...