I’ve always found it interesting that stuttering doesn’t show up in my band classes. I’ve had students who stutter when they speak, but they don’t have any problem playing a wind instrument (or, at least no problem attributable to stuttering). Dyslexia is that way, too. Kids who can’t read words have no problem with reading printed music.
Those who stutter can often speak fluently in time with a metronome too.
I did not know that some dyslexics have no trouble reading music. Very interesting, wonder why?
There are definite diagnosable neurological issues in many stuttering cases, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the reverse is true (i.e. all stuttering is not necessarily neuroligical), from what I’m told by my partner who is quite knowledgable on brain-thingies.
Something interesting…
Mrs Gargoyle is a teacher/interpreter in a local DHH (deaf and hard-of-hearing) school. There are deaf kids that manifest stuttering in their sign language in exactly the same manner as it would appear in vocal speech, including the rythym of the stutter and the conceptual/grammatical cues that tend to trigger a stutter response. There are also kids that have stuttering problems simultaneously in their sign-language and vocalization. It is very rare, however, for a kid to stutter only in one type of speech and not the other. This is a strong indicator to a neurological cause.
Possibly pointless anecdote, offering one other situation wherein a stutterer won’t stutter:
I worked with a guy (in his 50s) who had a terrible stutter. The company name was a series of letters, so hearing him answer the phone was painful.
“A-A-A-A Buh-Buh-B C-C-C Company, Can I help you?”
Poor guy. I had to work really hard to not finish his sentences for him. We were good friends and I figured that would annoy the crap out of me if I were the stutterer.
One day (my friend was a supervisor), some of the crew did something really bad (probably a safety violation, I don’t remember) and this guy tore into them. Ripped them up one side and back down the other, red-faced. That sort of even-though-you’re-my-friend-I-wouldn’t-mess-with-you-right-now sort of temper tantrum. As we stalked off to the lunch room after his tirade, I said, “Gee, StutteringFriend, you sure are mad at those guys.”
Grimly, he nodded and acknowledged he wasn’t mad at me.
Then I realized… “StutteringFriend, I know how mad you are – you didn’t stutter once the entire time you were yelling at those guys!”
He burst out laughing because, evidently, he didn’t realize that he didn’t stutter when he was really, really mad. A little irritated, he’d still stutter. Get him pit bull mad: stutter would be gone.
Adrenaline!
With major emotional stress, like rage or being scared witless, there seems to be a major reduction in stuttering that seems to be attributed to the way adrenaline interacts with the neurotranmitter dopamine. There is some kind of correlation between stuttering and the funky doodad genes that are in charge of controlling dopamine levels. (Excessive dopamine levels show up in a stutterer’s brain in the brain-bit that translates speech into muscle movement).
So while stress such as self-consciousness about speaking, being pressured for time, or asking out some gorgeous babe on a date increases stress. Rage or being scared enough to poop your pants alieviates the stuttering.
This is true. There are also different kind of dysfluencies that are very similar to stuttering as well. Some forms of stuttering are “neurogenic” (caused by brain injuries or stroke) or “psychogenic” (due to extreme psychological trauma).
There is also a type of stammering called “cluttering” which usually appens when you speed unusually fast so that your speech kind of careens out of control and you end up speaking before you’ve organized your thought properly.
I’m mildly bi-polar and for me, cluttering is an early warning sign of hypomania. When I get hypomainc my thoughts come so rapidly my mouth can’t keep up. I talke very fast normally, so I get caught up on words as if I hit a speed bump.
The pattern of cluttering is a bit differenent than stuttering though. It’s more like a stammer where you repeat short syllables like “The quick brown brown brown fox.” I tend to invert word order too “the quick fox brown… brown fox.”