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Stuttering, also known as stammering, is a speech disorder characterized externally by involuntary repetitions and prolongations of sounds, syllables, words, or phrases as well as involuntary silent pauses or blocks in which the person who stutters is unable to produce sounds.

The term stuttering as defined by listeners is most commonly associated with involuntary sound repetition, but it also encompasses the abnormal hesitation or pausing before speech, referred to by people who stutter as blocks, and the prolongation of certain sounds, usually vowels or semivowels. According to adults who stutter, stuttering is defined as a "constellation of experiences" expanding beyond the external disfluencies that are apparent to the listener. In fact, most of the experience of stuttering is internal and encompasses more experiences beyond the external speech disfluencies that are not observable by the listener. The moment of stuttering often begins before the disfluency is produced, described as a moment of anticipation - where the person who stutters knows which word they are going to stutter on. The sensation of losing control and anticipation of a stutter can lead people who stutter to react in different ways including behavioral and cognitive reactions. Some behavioral reactions can manifest outwardly and be observed as physical tension or struggle anywhere in the body. Almost 80 million people worldwide stutter, about 1% of the world's population. (Full article...)