Thank you very much! >Could you go more in depth on this “aim for internally initiated articulation”. This is a hard question to answer. First I will start explaining the concept of triggers in stuttering. Mark Onslow (PhD researcher) says: "Children do not stutter when they babble or on their first words (when they are 0-2 years old), but only when they are putting words together (from age 3 onwards). This indicates that something **triggers** stuttering." (Mark Onslow) In my opinion: If this is true, then we need to ask the question: What are stutter triggers? Answer: Stutter triggers could imply: * emotional, cognitive, linguistic, environmental or social triggers * sensory feedback (trigger) (for example, hearing our own voice (aka auditory feedback) triggers stuttering, whereas auditory masking so that we don't hear our voice anymore, can temporarily induce fluency) * heightened demands to feel less judged or to reduce perception of a listener (trigger) * heightened demands to require more confidence in our ability to move the speech muscles during a speech block (trigger) * motoric demands of linguistic stress: the variation in effort required to vary emphasis from syllable to syllable. Constructing syllabic stress becoming more variable and demanding (trigger) * heightened demands for articulatory variation, timing and coordination, pitch, duration, and loudness, or stress patterns (aka prosody demands) (trigger) * heightened demands for adapting to the communicative context or emotional arousal * heightened demands for speaking more appropriate, error-free, perfect, etc (trigger) Stuttering is initially established through classical conditioning of triggers (e.g., emotional triggers). Through generalization, many stimuli then acquire the capability of triggering stuttering. (Brutten & Shoemaker's two-factor theory) Conclusion: So, stutterers don't stutter during the babble phase or on their first words, because, at that time, we primarily rely on the supplementary motor area (SMA) - for planning of complex movements that are internally generated rather than **triggered** by sensory events. In later development, we then "learn" to **evaluate and rely on sensory events** to decide whether to generate initiation/termination signals to start speaking. In other words, we start relying on externally initiated articulation. Because we start relying on the: \- (A) Basal Ganglia - for performing a pattern matching operation to monitor the current cognitive context \- (B) Striatum - for utilization of sensory cues to guide speech behavior But we don't always "feel" or "notice" a trigger, when we stutter. Why is that? Answer: I draw the conclusion, that in such cases, a trigger is still present - that leads to stuttering. I think that we can categorize two types of triggers: (1) - one type of trigger might be specific-triggers that apply to specific words or situations - for example: "I can stutter on an anticipated word or in a feared situation" (we will likely feel or notice these kinds of triggers faster), (2) - and another type of trigger might be general-triggers that apply to all words and all situations - for example: "I can stutter on all words or in all situations". So, I think that the reason we sometimes don't "feel" or "notice" a trigger, when we stutter - is because general-triggers are less noticeable or less emotional. It seems that we don't like to admit it, but believing that "we are a stutterer" or adopting a mindset such as: "I stutter proudly", in my opinion, can lead to conditioning: developing such general-triggers, and associating them to generating initiation/termination signals for initiating syllabic articulation. However, I think that we are often in denial, in that, we tend to not believe that such general-triggers affect our stuttering. Because, so we tell ourselves, we don't feel or notice the triggers. And, I think that this is a conundrum, because denial (which is the opposite of acceptance) can maintain this vicious cycle, in my opinion. This likely prevents us from achieving stuttering remission or recovery don't you think? What is your sense of this? I hope this answers your question.. that was the long answer. A short answer would be, we conditioned ourselves that, during a block, we rely on external events (e.g., triggers, heightened demands, perceived conflict etc) to decide if we are going to initiate a motor program for speech production (instead of initiating motor programs immediately, anywhere, any time, just like non-stutterers).