Causes of Stammering

There is a good discussion going on the excellent http://closetstutterer.blogspot.com/ about the causes of stammering.
My contribution to the comments is the request for an update on Sophie's progress. The posts then get a bit out of sync.

Rather than joining that discussion I thought to let you know of it and add my own view here.

When I was 6yrs old I copied a boy in my class who stammered. My mother told me to speak properly and that was the end of that. The point is I copied one of my peer group. The lad was popular in the class and we were friends. I copied his way of speaking and we all do that.

I live in a town where there are a lot of parents with English accents and their children have Scottish accents. Who have the children modelled? When I was small I went on holiday to Ireland every year for 4-5 weeks and came back with an Irish accent.

Children unconsciously copy other people. It is worthwhile being clear about the difference between learning, copying or modelling, and teaching. Children copy others: parents, peer group - this is often passive learning. They are also taught actively and both mechanisms result in learning.

As a teenager I deliberately copied a stammering TV character for a few months till the benefit of not stammering was made clear to me. We emulate TV personalities in terms of other behaviours, language and dress: so why not how they speak - stammering?

I am not convinced that stammering that 'runs in families' cannot be explained by children copying adults. Copying others is what children and adults do.

Just watch people at a cafe and look how one mirrors the others' behaviour. This isn't deliberate. It is part of the cybernetics of rapport . Drop an unusual but sensible word into a conversation at a meeting and notice how long it takes someone to take it up and how often it is repeated. Rapport again. Subconscious. Why should stammering be different?


This is not to say that stammering is always a result of copying or modelling others' behaviour. I think stammering emerges as a behaviour and will have multiple ingredients that will be specific to the PWS. But copying can be one of the ingredients.

From the previous posts you will realise that I don't believe in cause-effect: so I would speculate that habit, self perception, shame and guilt, self consciousness and feelings of victimisation will eventually be added to the mix. All of this directs the PWSs attention back onto herself - just the state of affairs that perpetuates the problem ie the attempt at the solution becomes the problem - see previous posts.

And a Happy Christmas to all my Readers!