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Re: Stuttering onset: Can something "trigger" stuttering?

From: Ken Logan
Date: 17 Oct 2011
Time: 21:06:22 -0500
Remote Name: 74.179.121.152

Comments

The others have made some great comments to your question. A few additional thoughts... as you noted, it is likely that one must be predisposed to stutter if one is to one day express the symptoms of stuttering. It seems that it is possible also to be predisposed to stuttering (or some other heritable conditions) and not show the symptoms (studies of stuttering in identical twins suggest that this is the case, i.e., one member of the pair can shows signs of stuttering, while the other does not). For many children, it may be that something as seemingly benign as grammar acquisition can lead to the expression of the symptoms, (grammar lets a person build long sentences, long sentences place a certain amount of stress on the speech production system, if the system is "weak" in some way, then that weakness becomes apparent). As the others suggested, though, at some point it almost doesn't matter what triggered it - the more important thing to expend energy upon is this: what can I do about it now? Also, it is worth considering the possibility that subtle signs of stuttering may have been apparent in your speech before you first became aware of it. So, it might be that the encounter you described triggered your awareness of stuttering, but not necessarily the symptoms.


Last changed: 10/22/11