Stuttering
Stuttering is the condition in which the flow of speech is broken by abnormal stoppages (no sound), repetitions, or prolongations of sounds and syllables. Stuttering is the primary disorder of speech rhythm; it is like trying to run with loops of rope around your feet. People that describe how it feels to stutter say that they know what they want to say, but the words just do not come out smoothly. Some people that stutter just have problems with certain letters. In the brain thought is changed into a code we have learned called language. Once the thought is coded into language, the brain sends a message to the muscles that control the speech telling them to move and make the right sound come out. Then the mouth forms it through words. When speech sounds is distorted and the speech can not be understood, or when stuttering disrupts the rhythm of oral message, then there is a speech problem.
Characteristics of stuttering include avoiding talking situations and hard words. They will also often use facial and body contortions, head jerks and eye blinks, taking minutes to say one word, slurring words, momentary feelings of rejection and non-acceptance, disfluence's in speech, images of stuttering even if they are not speaking or making a sound. After a stutter has developed other factors act to maintain and aggravate fluency difficulty such as how people react to there stutter has an emotional effect, such as shame, embarrassment and anxiety. Someone easily frustrated will tighten or tense speech muscles listeners' response to the stutter.
Over three million people in America stutter and it effects all ages, but occurs most frequently in children age's two to six that are developing language. Most children outgrow their stutter and it is estimated that less than 1% of adults stutter. An important thing for people that stutter to remember is that many people do have a stutter, famous people include: Jack Welch, a general electric CEO, John...
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