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Understanding What Studder Is

Understanding What Studder Is

When there is prolongation of sounds, repetitions of syllables, or airflow blockages, the flow of speech become disfluent.  Any kind of blockage, discoordination, or fragmentation of sounds result to a studder.  

Studder, first off, is a misspelling of the word stutter.  It is a disorder that may be experienced by both children and adults when they can not appropriately pronounce the words they want to say.  However, before delving into the topic, it is very important that you understand the concepts of fluency and disfluency of speech first.  A person is fluent when there is a forward flow of his or her speech.  On the other hand, blockage or breakdown in the forward flow of one’s speech is disfluency.

It is normal to experience some occurrence of disfluency once in while.  For instance, when you insert interjections like “uh”, “uhm”, and “like” in the middle of your sentence, it naturally disrupts fluency.  You may also unnecessarily repeat words or phrases.  This too, creates disfluency.  However, both of these scenarios are not automatically considered as a disorder.

Another case of normal disfluency is that which happens in young children.  Children between the ages of two and five are still developing their speech and disruptions in their fluency are a natural occurrence.  They eventually get past the stage once they start school.

Now, these fluency disruptions are not the same as the disfluency that is happening when a person is stuttering. People who studder or stutter have this habit of repeating sounds and syllables like “ca” in cat.  It becomes “ca-ca-cat”.  It may also be a prolongation of sound like “sssss-salad”.  Sometimes, there’s a complete blockage of the airflow and no sound is produced at all.

People who stutter inevitably develop some negative attitudes toward themselves and their speaking abilities. Stuttering is not only a disruption of a person’s speech but also of his or her life.