What causes lack of co-ordination:  But even after it is known that stuttering and stammering are caused by a lack of co-ordination between the brain and the organs of speech, still, the mind of scientific and inquiring trend must ask, “What causes the lack of co-ordination?” And that question is quite in order.  It is plain that the lack of co-ordination does not exist without a cause.  What, then, is this cause?

An inquiry into the cause of the inco-ordination between brain and speech-organs leads us to an examination of the original or basic causes of stammering.  These original or basic causes in their various ramifications are almost as numerous as the cases of speech disorders themselves, but they fall into a comparatively few well-defined classes.

These original causes in many cases do not appear to have been the direct and immediate cause of the trouble, but rather a predisposing cause or a cause which brought about a condition that later developed into stuttering or stammering.

Let us set down a list of the more common of these causes, not with the expectation of having the list complete but rather of giving facts about the representative or more common Basic Predisposing Causes of Stuttering and Stammering.

A little more than 96 per cent. of the causes of stammering which the author has examined can be traced back to one of the five causes shown below: 

1—­Mimicry or Imitation 2—­Fright or severe nerve shock 3—­Fall or injury of some sort 4—­Heredity 5—­Disease

Let us take up these familiar causes of stuttering or stammering in the order in which we have set them down and learn something more of them.

The first and one of the most common causes is Mimicry, or, as it is probably more often called, Imitation.  Mimicry or Imitation is almost wholly confined to children.  After reaching the age of discretion, the adult is usually of sufficient intelligence to refrain from mimicking or imitating a person who stutters or stammers.

The average small boy, however, (or girl, for that matter) seems to find delight in mocking and imitating a playmate who stutters or stammers, and so keen is this delight that he persists in this practice day after day until (as its own punishment) the practice of mockery or mimicry brings upon the boy himself the affliction in which he found his fun.

It may be noted, however, that Imitation is not always conscious, but often unconscious.  The small child begins to imitate the stuttering companion without knowing that he engages in imitation.  This practice, notwithstanding the fact that it is unconscious, soon develops into stuttering, without any cause being assignable by the parent until investigation develops that unconscious and even unnoticed imitation is the basic cause of the defective utterance.

It has been definitely determined that stuttering may be communicable through contagious impressions, especially among children of tender age whose minds are subject to the slightest impressions.