RESEARCH QUESTION: What causes stuttering in children?

Irwin, Ann. “Successful Treatment of Stuttering.” Time 12 Apr. 2006. Academic Search Premier. Ebsco Publishing. Manatee Community Coll. Lib., Bradenton. 3           Sept. 2006. http://www.Epnet.com.

         In this article on stuttering, psychologist Ann Irwin explains that parental reactions play an important role in creating stuttering as learned behavior. In her article, “Successful Treatment Stuttering,” she claims that parents, although they are "trying to do what is best" for their children, are often the "accidental cause" of this speech disorder. Based on her own work and studies conducted by speech therapists at the University of Pennsylvania, she recounts that parents play a key role in this speech impediment. When parents see something in their child's speech which is "not quite the same as before," they "quite naturally" begin to correct it, explains Irwin. This, she adds, is the beginning of "trouble." Irwin describes a five-year-old child who repeated a word's initial syllable thirty-five times without realizing anything was wrong. The danger, she argues, is in "making an issue of a child's repetitions and prolongations," a pattern which will make the child "self-conscious" and which can "aggravate" the child's speech problems. if parents knew that the trouble is not so much in the “first signs of tension” in some of the words the child speaks, but in the “correcting” of it," she concludes, "they would probably have a child who does not stutter instead of one who does.” This article contains critical information for my third sub-point—that parents are the cause of stuttering.