Stuttering: Imagining a Solution to the Riddle

Abstract

The old saying by Van Riper (with a nod to Winston Churchill), that stuttering is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, is well known. While it would be preposterous for any of us to state that, 40 years later, we now have solved the riddle, we can say with a great degree of confidence that advances in scientific inquiry have brought us closer to understanding the factors that may trigger the onset, development, and/or maintenance of stuttering. Nevertheless, much still needs to be learned, because the riddle still poses many challenges. For instance, we do not fully understand why developmental stuttering starts somewhere between 2 and 9 years of age, but onset after puberty is rarely if ever seen (other than neurogenic stuttering, but that is a different story), or why boys are more likely to develop chronic stuttering than girls are.