What is cluttering?

While most people around the world have an idea of what stuttering is all about, most are not familiar with the fluency disorder of cluttering. Cluttering is a disorder of speech fluency in which people are not able to adjust their speech rate to the syntactic (grammar) or phonological (word structure) demands of the moment (van Zaalen, 2009). PWC often say: “I think I stutter, but actually it is not real stuttering.” Or they say “Others always complain that I am not intelligible and speak too fast, and I want to get rid of these complaints."

How to diagnose cluttering

Cluttering can undoubtedly be diagnosed in children of 10 years of age and older (van Zaalen, 2009). Does this mean that cluttering cannot be diagnosed before the age of 10? The answer to this question is no. Cluttering can be diagnosed earlier, but careful differential diagnostics is needed. In younger children, it is difficult to distinguish the errors and repetitions in speech production from other speech and/or language disorders.

What causes cluttering?

Some researchers think that the speech behaviours associated with cluttering lie on a continuum with the speech behaviours of typical speakers (e.g. Ward, 2006).  Supporters of this “spectrum hypothesis” think that people who clutter do not differ in kind from people who speak typically –  but just in degree.  In other words, people who clutter make the same types of speech errors as everyone else but make more of them, and in greater “clusters”, than we would consider typical.

Other researchers think the root problem with cluttering is that people who clutter simply speak too quickly, giving them an insufficient time to organise and formulate their utterances (e.g. van Zaalan et al., 2009).

Can cluttering happen with other disorders?

es.  Cluttering is often seen alongside other disorders such as stuttering, language disorders and speech sound disorders.  Some estimates suggest as many as 2/3 of people who clutter also stutter.

Some cluttering symptoms may look a little like childhood apraxia of speech.  However, a slow speech rate is characteristic of apraxia, in contrast to the fast rate often observed with people who clutter