Cause Of Child Stuttering

Developmental stuttering, unlike other types of dysfluencies, typically develops between 2-5 years of age. A multitude of factors may predispose a child to stuttering, such as: genetics, sex, age, environment, or family history (Guitar, 2014). A child may be exposed to these factors and never stutter or the child may develop a stutter. Various characteristics play a role in the development of a stutter; one specific cause has not been identified.
Many theories exist attempt to explain the cause of stuttering. However, the cause is still somewhat of a mystery. Some believe that stuttering is a result of left hemisphere dominance (Travis, 1931). It has also been hypothesized that stuttering is a result of a lack of an internal monitoring process (Kolk and Postma, 1997). Many other theories

Ambrose, Yairi, and Cox (1993) researched the genetic component by investigating the family of preschool-age children who stutter and identifying the frequency of stutterers in each family. The preschool age child must be identified as a child who stutters by a parent, SLP, receive a rating of 2 on an 8 point severity scale, and present with at least three SLDs per 100 syllables. All children had stuttered for at least 6 months. The parents of 69 children who stutter were interviewed in order to obtain a family tree. Frequency of participants with positive family histories, and frequency of relatives who stutter were obtained from the family trees. After analyzing the family trees, Ambrose et al., (1993) discovered that 71% of children who stuttered had a family member who also stuttered. Stuttering was more prevalent among males in this study. These results indicate that it is highly probably the transmission of genes may predispose a child to stuttering. However, genetics does not work alone. Barry (2014) examined to results of twin studies and concluded that genes must interact with the