I conducted my research by reading many books and articles written by experts who have a relation of some sort to stuttering, whether it be they have a stutter, or work with patients who do. I was also able to consult doctors and speech pathologists in person and ask them questions.

For the second half of my research, I conducted a survey on the high school population to gather data from my classmates.

Over 70 million people are affected!

In total, 5% of all children are affected by stuttering at some point in their lifetime. However, 65% of preschoolers recover in the first two years after initially displaying a stutter, and 74% recover by their early teens.

75% of people that stutter are males.

The Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis is more active in males and more cortisol is released as a result. It has been found that cortisol is increased in people who stutter.

There are three different types of stuttering that people face.

People with a stutter

• Isolate themselves so they don't have to talk as much

• Have a low self-esteem

• Have an inability to enunciate certain consonants or vowels properly

• Try to come off as normal speaking by avoiding saying certain words that trigger a stutter

  • This only affects certain people. When people do this it is called covert stuttering.

What causes a stutter is largely unknown. However, most of the time a stutter is connected to genetics. Children whose first degree relatives stutter increases their chances of having a stutter by 2 to 3 times. Researchers are dedicating a lot of resources to finding the physiological source of stuttering.

One specific theory is there is overactivation of the cerebrum and cerebellum in people who stutter, causing deactivation of the left hemisphere auditory areas. Another hypothesis is that the right hemisphere is overactivated when people who stutter try to communicate. A study showed that in people who stuttered, their right hemispheres were much more active than people who did not stutter when communicating.

There are other hypotheses for why people stutter, but these are the most in-depth.

A timeline for my project

Originally I wanted my capstone to culminate in a presentation. It would be one of the hardest challenges of the capstone for me: speaking in front of a large crowd about my stutter. I spent hours upon hours working on my project and gathering knowledge during the summer, and I even had a finished presentation that was ready to present. However, I was not able to follow through with my goals due to Covid-19. Despite this setback, I am still proud of my capstone and what the end product is.

What I would have changed if I were to do this capstone again

Even though I am proud of my finished project, there is still room for improvement. If I were to do my capstone over, I would try to reach a broader audience for my survey. I do not think my questions were perfect either. Other than my survey, I am gratified by the sufficient research I did.

My advice to others considering pursuing a capstone

Deciding to work on a capstone is a difficult decision. You should want to work on a topic you are passionate about. If you want to do a capstone for recognition by colleges, I would suggest not pursuing this. I was really interested in learning about stuttering, which has affected me most of my life, so I decided to work on a capstone on it to better understand it myself. If you do choose to work on a capstone, I would make sure you get most of the presentation done by the end of the summer so you can spend the last few months preparing your presentation.