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From: Klaas Bakker
Date: 10 Oct 2005
Time: 15:49:32 -0500
Remote Name: 146.7.150.239
Darlene, Your question cannot be answered very quickly or completely through this forum but I'll try to get an answer started. One of the possible complications is that persons who clutter may stutter to varying degrees as well. Cluttering is mostly recognized as an affliction of speech fluency that in most cases is centered around the tendency to have a rapid or irregular rate of speech delivery. As a result, articulation suffers and quite possibly many other aspects of communication. So, rate forces a clutterer to make more mistakes than usual. Speech rate does not always have to be fast in an absolute sense but could be fast enough to compromise one's speech production integrity. In the case of stuttering difficulty is in the fluent progression from one sound to another, or between sounds while usually the part of the message to be spoken is completely formulated internally before an utterance begins. It is experienced as an involuntary inability to proceed with speech sound production. While not thoroughly researched, fairly good descriptions of the differences between cluttering and stuttering are available. I would, among others, refer to a chapter by Alf Preus(Norway) published in the following book (1986): F. L. Myers & K. O. St. Louis (Eds.). Cluttering: A Clinical Perspective. Kibworth, Great Britain: Far Communications.