Here is what I found. How do you guys view this? "*Yairi’s (Phd) observation that stuttering almost never begins before 1.5 years of age has been backed up by lots of people. And it is certainly true that before that age you almost never see little children struggling to get their words out. When very young children speak, there is a complete absence of struggle. My interpretation of this is that up until 1.5 years of age, the initiation of speech execution is regulated only by the basal ganglia. So, when the release threshold is too high, the child naturally remains silent… before 1.5 years of age, he never uses his conscious will-power to push the words out, because at that young age the pre-frontal cortex is not yet sufficiently developed to enable him to try to do that. So, before 1.5 years of age, they just naturally spontaneously speak when the release threshold is low and stay silent when it is high – and there is no struggle.* *My thinking on this has changed. I talked about the release threshold “coming online” around 1.5 – 2.0 years of age… whereas now I’m inclined to think that the release threshold is always online… and the change at 1.5-2.0 years of age is the coming online of the parts of the prefrontal cortex that enable the child to use its will-power to give an extra boost of activation to motor plans that it wants to execute.* *Conflict occurs between our desire to speak - on a cognitive level (regulated by the neo-cortex) - and the variable release threshold (what our basal ganglia and limbic systems allow us to do) i.e., wanting to avoid saying the planned word/sound due to associated risks or costs. Conflicts arise because the Basal Ganglia rely on past experiences to determine the release threshold, whereas the neo-cortex is much more forward looking and is strongly influenced by hopes and desires - which may be very different to our past experiences. This approach-avoidance conflict - is a conflict between your neocortex (specifically the dorso-lateral pre-frontal cortex) instructing your articulators to move, and the reptilian complex (specifically the basal-ganglia- which houses the release threshold mechanism) "instructing" them not to move*." **Question**: Do you agree that our release threshold mechanism is an unconditioned response? (i.e., a mechanism we already have without prior learning? Isn't this mechanism hard-wired?) (although nevertheless needs to be fine tuned through multiple learning experiences?) How do you view this?