People who stutter want to know, “What causes stuttering in adults?” Most began stuttering when they were children. Usually, stuttering begins in the preschool years, about 2 to 5 years of age. This is also the time young children start to develop language skills that will allow them to communicate
verbally.
Physiological causesÂ
Early pioneers in stuttering treatment thought that stuttering resulted from parents calling too much attention to the speech of normally speaking preschoolers. Parents were blamed for turning non-stuttering children into stutterers. An early stuttering specialist told my own mother that she had caused my stuttering when I was a preschooler.
Careful research in the 1970s clearly demonstrated that the cause of stuttering was a physiological difference in the brain of people who stutter and not caused by parents or other environmental influences. In other words, people are stutter are born that way.
Brain research
What causes stuttering in adults is further explained by brain studies. Early researchers used EEG recordings to demonstrate that brain activity in stutters was different than in non-stutters. Stutterers showed more activity in the right hemisphere than non-stutters. The left hemisphere is used for analytic thinking and speaking. People who stutter or used the right hemisphere for this activity. More recent research into the brain activities of stutterers versus non-stutterers clearly demonstrates the physiological causes related to stuttering.
