Abstract
Many investigators explain stuttering as a disorder of motor programming, likely influenced by a multiplicity of factors, including heredity and genetics (i.e., Conture et al., 2006; Guitar & McCauley, 2012; Radford, 2010). Although constitutional factors, an individual’s physical and mental condition, are implicated in increasing children’s risk for stuttering, therapies involving medications or other direct treatments are not common for younger children. Therapists generally use behavioral methods with children who persist in stuttering, as children’s stuttering may often be managed satisfactorily with behavioral approaches (i.e., Starkweather, Gottwald, & Halfond, 1990). Such approaches often focus on modifying speech breathing, with children taught to reduce rate, prolong vowels, or phonate continually through a sequence of syllables when talking.
There are few studies, however, that examine speech breathing in typically developing children and children who stutter. If children who stutter have a markedly different developmental course for mastering speech breathing, there is a need to determine if the difference is a result of environmental, biologic factors, health and/or medical conditions. MacLarnon and Hewitt (1999), anthropologists examining the development of modern language (oral language, based in speech use), conjecture that fine respiratory control is an essential component for language, with the volitional control of complex muscle movements, influenced by cognitive factors distinguishing the extended and variable sound productions of humans in contrast to what the authors describe as “markedly less expiratory control” exhibited by primates (p. 341). Moreover, speech breathing is a complex motor skill that develops gradually in typically developing children from ages 3 to 10 years and parallels language development (Boliek, Hixon, Watson, & Jones, 2009). If faulty speech breathing underlies stuttering as a core symptom, there is a need to examine breathing for both vegetative and speech functions in children who stutter.
If stuttering is a neurologic disorder, with abnormalities in breathing, improving children’s breathing may be the preferred treatment if this speculation is supported by future studies (i.e., Mawson, Radford, & Jacob, 2016). Examining the developmental course of speech breathing may lead to a better understanding of the cause of stuttering and the basis for effective treatment.