Developmental dysfluency

Abstract

Fluency is the flow of speech. Human beings become fluent effortlessly and automatically in the first few years of life. To signal intention, desire, dissent or whatever, human beings use the language(s) of their parents constituted by the accepted structured sequences of phonetic/phonological chunks which adhere roughly to universal rules, and which are conveyed across the ether to their listeners, by means of acoustic waves received by the latters’ hearing and cognitive processes. To meet the requirements of meaning and clarity, the flow of speech should follow a prescribed form which demands no distortions or interruptions other than acceptable pauses and variations of speed. Individuals unable to meet these requirements may, as has already been reported, have various disorders and deficits which disable them and create unacceptable speech production. Other individuals have difficulty in maintaining the necessary flow of speech production which contributes to easy communicative interchange. Those people are referred to as either stammerers, stutterers or the dysfluent. For this discussion the term stutterers will be used.