Essay On Stuttering

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Stuttering is a disorder of oral communication and it is characterized by disruptions in the production of speech sounds, also called "disfluencies" (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, 2014). It usually emerges in childhood and affects around 5% of the population (Guitar, 2006), even though there is some variation in the incidence of stuttering in different studies. During infancy, it is common for children to present dysfluency because of the complex process of language acquisition and development. These disfluencies are normal and tend to disappear in 80% of the children, however for some it may evolve into a chronic state that is called developmental stuttering. Stuttering can also occur in two other circumstances, from injuries, which is called acquired or neurogenic stuttering and another one, involving psychological aspects (Oliveira et. al., 2012). Perkins, Kent and Curlee (1991) focused on the theories to explain the possible causes of disfluency and theorized that speech disruption and time pressure are the two important variables that may account for the stuttered dysfluency.
There are many studies investigating the causes of stuttering, however the etiology of stuttering still remains uncertain. According to these studies, genetic predispositions play an important role for the developmental stuttering.
The researches based on familial incidence and family aggregation are designed to find out if stuttering runs in families and the effect of relatedness of family members on the disorder. The study by Bryngelson and Rutherford (1937) were one of the first researchers who revealed the influence of familial incidence and indicated that the risk of stuttering is three times greater within the families containing ...

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...ic heritability studies revealed that there is a very strong heritability factor as the cause of stuttering. Moreover, current research is trying to find specific genes responsible for stuttering however no clear results could be obtained yet. The studies indicated that the influence of heritability can be up to 85% and led researchers to find out the remaining. Parental factors, unique life-events and learning factors are found to be important especially by developmental stuttering and that they may affect the individuals through their life time. As it can be understood from these studies, it is now generally accepted that fluency is a multidimensional skill reflecting a complex coordination of many extrinsic and intrinsic factors (Karrass et al., 2006). That is why; it also becomes important to focus on many different aspects during the treatment of the stutters.

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