Cluttering Symptoms

Cluttering is a fluency disorder characterized by excessive breaks in a person's flow of speech due to one of several factors, including disorganized speech planning, talking in spurts, speaking too quickly or being unsure of what to say. Cluttering differs from stuttering as a person who stutters typically knows what he wants to say but is unable to speak without repetition of syllables. There are several symptoms specific to cluttering that assist in differentiating between the two speech disorders.

Symptoms

• The two main symptoms of cluttering are lack of fluency and fluency rate deviations. There are several secondary symptoms, which sometimes present with a cluttering condition and are useful when diagnosing cluttering. These secondary symptoms include disorganized and confusing language, limited awareness of fluency rate, slurring of speech sounds, temporary improvement when told to pay attention or slow down, and elimination of the non-stressed syllables from longer words. A person with this speech disorder sometimes also has auditory perceptual difficulties, a limited attention span and several blood relatives with the same disorder.

Cause

• As little is known about the condition, there are no determined causes of a cluttering speech disorder. There are, however, several factors that induce cluttering in an individual. In some cases, the use of recreational drugs and alcohol influences cluttering. In other cases, the cluttering is a result of a medical condition specific to the affected individual, or a side effect from some medications. Some cognitive conditions, which affect concentration, also cause cluttering.

Diagnosis

• Before diagnosing a cluttering disorder, a speech-language pathologist conducts an extensive assessment of an individual's speech patterns, learning habits and social problems. The evaluation also requires reports or separate evaluations from other professionals including neuropsychologists, special educators, classroom teachers and psychologists. In rare cases, intelligence and academic tests are required to eliminate the possibility of a learning disability.

Treatment

• Treatment of a cluttering condition typically involves therapy. The therapy first concentrates on reducing the patient's speaking rate with various techniques, such as issuing speeding tickets for excessive speaking rates or timing speech with a delayed auditory feedback (DAF) device. Once the speaking rate reduces, the therapy addresses any lingering pronunciation problems by practicing speaking in highly structured, short sentences and learning to exaggerate stressed syllables. The patient then learns to enhance her speaking by planning the delivery and the content of her speech. This also helps improve a patient's confidence when speaking.