The purpose of this paper was to review the nomenclature for acquired stuttering and to formulate some terminology recommendations with respect to the domain of acquired stuttering. A critical review of the literature on acquired stuttering served as the basis for drawing up the recommendations. Over the years several labels have been coined to refer to acquired stuttering, but not all of these are equally appropriate. It is hoped that the proposed recommendations may help promoting clarity and can make the exchange of clinical data and research findings easier and more precise.
According to the HYPWorld Health Organization (1977), the term “stuttering” refers to “disorders in the rhythm of speech in which the individual knows precisely what he or she wishes to say but at the time is unable to say it because of an involuntary repetition, prolongation or cessation of a sound” (p. 487). In most cases stuttering has its onset somewhere between the ages of two and five (Johnson and Associates, 1959 and Yairi and Ambrose, 2005), at the time a child is still in the phase of acquiring speech and language, and as such has often been called a developmental disorder.1 However, disorders in the rhythm of speech may also manifest itself for the first time later in life, beyond the typical childhood period, for instance in association with a neurological episode, as side-effect of drugs or in the context of a psychological trauma. Although the use of the label “stuttering” in case of dysfluencies of non-developmental origin has been contested in the past (Culatta and Leeper, 1988 and Curlee, 1995), it now seems common to also refer to acquired dysfluencies as stuttering. A search in Medline shows that the term “acquired stuttering”, for instance, generates 30 titles between 1995 and 2012. “Acquired stuttering” is also discussed in several handbooks on stuttering (see for instance Bloodstein & Bernstein Ratner, 2008; Manning, 2010 and Ward, 2006). This current, more generalized use of the term stuttering seems legitimized by a number of studies that came to the conclusion that there are no real distinguishing features between developmental stuttering and acquired dysfluencies. Based on the symptomatology alone it is often not possible to distinguish between the two conditions (Jokel, De Nil, & Sharpe, 2007; Lebrun et al., 1983 and Van Borsel and Taillieu, 2001) and generally they are treated with the same therapeutical strategies and with equal results (Market, Montague, Buffalo, & Drummond, 1990). In addition it has been shown that recent explanatory hypotheses of developmental stuttering can also explain the clinical observations from patients with acquired dysfluencies (Krishnan & Tiwari, 2011). However, over the years researchers and clinicians have used a whole array of terms to refer to forms of non-developmental stuttering, not all of which are equally appropriate. The purpose of the present paper is to give a critical overview of the nomenclature that has been used for acquired fluency disorders. Based on this overview some terminology recommendations are proposed. We hope that these recommendations may help promoting clarity and can make the exchange of clinical data and research findings easier and more precise.
While formerly many clinicians may have felt uncomfortable applying the label stuttering to refer to the dysfluencies acquired by a patient without a history of childhood stuttering (Helm-Estabrooks, 1993), the use of the term stuttering for dysfluencies of non-developmental origin now seems to have found almost general acceptance. Over the years, several labels have been coined to refer to acquired stuttering, but not all of these are equally appropriate. Based on the above overview, some terminology recommendations can be proposed (Table 1). We hope that these recommendations may help promoting clarity and can make the exchange of clinical data and research findings easier and more precise. It is evident that this proposal is open to discussion and liable to revision as the knowledge of acquired stuttering increases.
