FAULTY VISUALIZATION EXPLAINS ALL PHENOMENA:
Upon this basis of an involved visualization all the intricate phenomena of stuttering may be explained. Let us take some of these up in detail.
THE START. Visualization processes are a matter of growth through exercise and development and use from the sensory area mostly of the eye. If these processes in their early start and evolution receive a setback through the treatment of people in the environment, such as interruptions of their early speech efforts, constant inattention of those to whom they speak, and persistent refusal by older people to answer questions propounded or the allowing of the little one to ask the same question without hopes of answer for a great number of times, these visualization processes receive a setback. This kind of treatment in the home is one of the chief causes of the slump of visualization processes. Another cause is hearing other stutterers interrupt their own visualization processes as they stutter; and still other minor causes may be almost any psychic trauma; these traumata, such as an operation, an accident or a severe illness, are sufficient to bring to the surface or intensify a growing lack of visualization that has been started by bad environment long before.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF STUTTERING. When the habit of visualization is lessened, the action upon speech is the same as the withdrawal of an inhibiting or regulating reflex arc.
It is thus that visualization processes act like reflex inhibition. When visualization is present a higher inhibition arc is functioning and we have a normal speech as a consequent reflex expression. When and in proportion as visualization is absent this higher inhibition arc is not functioning; and the speech thus uncontrolled flies away in spasms which we call stutter. It should be called an exaggerated or uninhibited speech reflex.
The stutter, then, is merely the externalization of an exaggerated reflex of motor speech, exaggerated through the loss of the inhibitory action of a more or less weakened visualization process.
Not only does this explain the phenomena at large but seems to be a satisfactory explanation for all its intricate, minute details. Some examples may, perhaps, be welcome at this point. I say to two stutterers: "Tell your first name." One of them stutters and the other one does not. On furthering questioning, it is found that the one who did not stutter visualized, and the one who did stutter did not visualize.
CONCRETE: These conditions are also seen when stutterers talk about concrete and abstract matters or when they promulgate some important plea that cannot be visualized. On concrete matters that can be easily visualized the stuttering is gone; and on abstract matters where visualization is hard, the stuttering again appears.
ANGER: In anger, when an intense visual picture is presented and occupies the mind, there is then no stuttering, and also in other similar situations there are periods when the individual is abandoned to some visual concept which acts in the same manner.
SINGING: We all know that stutterers can sing without stuttering. The process here is a similar one; only that there is held up over the speech before utterance an auditory image of a melody in place of the visual image as held in normal speech. This auditory image may be more easily applicable as supplying the needed inhibition reflex arc than the visual because it is nearer to the speech area.