Name(s):
Impairment of fluency
Impairment of speech rhythm
Stammering
Stuttering
Slurring of speech
Confused speech
Background
The causes of stuttering remain unclear; the ancients assumed that tongue movement was encumbered in some way; more recently Freudian psychoanalysts have claimed that stuttering showed anal fixation, analogously to constipation. The current neurological view is that stuttering is a motor control disorder, whereby undue motor force coupled with improper processing of one's own auditory feedback disrupts one's fluency. Alternatively, inadequate use of rhythmic coordinators in the brain may be at fault, and this could either neurological or psychological causes.
Incidence
55 million people worldwide stutter, of whom 80% are men.