Cluttering Speech: Signs and Examples

Cluttering is a fluency disorder in which speech sounds too fast or too uneven for the listener to follow, with words running together, syllables dropping out and sentences that restart part way through. Cluttering is not stuttering, although the two are often confused and some children have both.

Cluttering is far less well known than stuttering, and cluttering speech is often put down to mumbling or fast talking.

What is cluttering?

Cluttering is a disorder of the flow of speech. A widely used definition (St. Louis and Schulte, 2011, as summarised by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association) has two parts. First, the person’s speech sounds abnormally fast, irregular or both. Second, at least one of these comes with it:

a large number of ordinary disfluencies, such as “um”, restarts and changes of mind mid-sentence
pauses in places where a sentence would not normally break
sounds and syllables squeezed together or left out, so that long words collapse

The word that matters is “sounds”. A child who clutters is not always speaking faster than other children when the rate is measured. The Stuttering Foundation describes it as talking at a rate the speaker’s own system cannot keep up with, so the message breaks down on the way out.

Cluttering has nothing to do with intelligence.

What does cluttered speech sound like?

Cluttered speech sounds rushed and blurred, and it tends to come in bursts. Parents and teachers often notice several of these together:

Collapsed words. Syllables are dropped or run together: “tevision” for television, “libry” for library, “prolly” for probably.
Blended phrases. Short words fuse into one: “I want to go” comes out as “Iwango”.
Fillers and restarts. Many “um” and “like” moments, and sentences that are abandoned and begun again.
Odd pauses. A stop in the middle of a phrase, then a rush to the end.
Fading endings. Some children get quieter towards the end of a sentence or phrase.
A story that loses its thread. The child jumps between ideas and the listener cannot tell what happened first.

Here is one sentence written three ways. These are made-up illustrations, not recordings of a real child.

How the sentence is said	What it sounds like
As intended	“On Saturday we went to the library and I borrowed a book about volcanoes.”
Cluttered	“OnSatdy we wento the libry and um I got, I borrowed, there was this, a book bout volcanoes.”
Stuttered	“On S-S-S-Saturday we went to the library and I, I, I borrowed a book about (silence, lips pressed) volcanoes.”

In the cluttered version the sentence comes out compressed and reshuffled: syllables drop, words fuse and the child changes course part way through. In the stuttered version the sentence is well formed, and the child is stuck on particular sounds.

Cluttering vs stuttering: how are they different?

Cluttering blurs and rushes speech, while stuttering stops it. A child who stutters usually knows exactly what they want to say and cannot get the word out. A child who clutters gets the words out quickly, but in a form other people struggle to follow.

What to compare	Cluttering	Stuttering
What you hear	Fast or jerky bursts, words run together, dropped syllables, many fillers and restarts	Repeated sounds, syllables or words, stretched sounds, and blocks where no sound comes out
Physical effort	Little or no visible struggle	Often struggle and tension, sometimes with extra movements of the face or body
Whether the child notices	Often unaware of the speed, though many notice that people ask them to repeat things	More often aware of it, and older children may avoid words or situations
When the child concentrates	Often clearer for a short time when asked to slow down or when being recorded	Slowing down on request is not a treatment on its own
When it is usually identified	Rarely before about 8 years of age	Usually in the preschool years, as children start joining words into sentences
What helps	Learning to notice the pattern, pause, stress syllables and organise the message	Treatment chosen by age; before 6 the Lidcombe Program has the strongest evidence

The words used for these conditions overlap as well. The guide to stuttering and stammering explains terms such as disfluency and fluency disorder that appear on reports and referrals.

Can a child clutter and stutter at the same time?

Yes. Cluttering and stuttering can occur in the same child, and each can hide the other. The Stuttering Foundation notes that cluttering is sometimes not noticed until the stuttering eases, either with time or with therapy.

How often the two overlap is not settled. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association reports a clinical estimate that about one third of people who stutter show at least some features of cluttering. It says plainly that the figure rests on clinicians’ experience more than on data. One study it cites, which drew on German health insurance records, found stuttering in about 16 per cent of children and adolescents diagnosed with cluttering.

This matters because the two respond to different help. A child treated only for a stutter may still be hard to understand if cluttering is also present.

How common is cluttering, and when is it identified?

Cluttering is uncommon. Estimates of how many children and adolescents clutter range up to about 1.2 per cent, and the research behind those numbers is thin.

Cluttering probably begins in the preschool years, around the same age as stuttering, but it is generally not diagnosed then. Young children’s speech is still developing, and fast, tangled talk is hard to separate from ordinary development. The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists says cluttering is not usually diagnosed until a child is at least 8, when sentences are long enough for the pattern to show.

If your child is under 6 and repeating sounds or getting stuck, that is more likely to be stuttering, which is covered in the guide to stuttering in children.

What causes cluttering, and is it linked to ADHD or autism?

Nobody knows what causes cluttering. Research is limited, and there may be a family link.

Cluttering often travels with other differences. The conditions most often reported alongside it are ADHD, autism, learning difficulties including dyslexia, developmental language disorder and Tourette syndrome. The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists describes cluttering on its own as quite rare. The guide to stuttering with other conditions covers how fluency and conditions such as ADHD and autism overlap.

What does an assessment for cluttering look for?

A speech pathologist assesses cluttering by listening to a child talk in several ways and working out whether rate, clarity or the organisation of the message is breaking down. An assessment commonly includes:

Talking in different tasks. Conversation, retelling a story and reading aloud, because cluttering can show in one and not another.
Rate and clarity. How fast the speech sounds, how much a listener understands, and whether syllables are being dropped.
A slow-down trial. If speech becomes much clearer when the child slows, that points towards cluttering more than stuttering, although it does not settle the question.
Signs of stuttering. Repetitions, stretched sounds and blocks, so both are identified if both are there.
Speech sounds, language and reading. To see whether another difficulty explains the unclear speech or sits beside it.

Cluttering often eases in a formal setting, because a child monitors their speech more closely with a stranger. For that reason, a short recording of ordinary talk at home is useful to bring. Record a few minutes when your child is relaxed and telling you about something they care about, with the phone set down out of the way so the recording is not the focus.

What helps a child who clutters?

Speech therapy for cluttering aims to make speech easier to understand, and it works on the particular features a child shows. Published guidance describes these targets:

noticing the pattern, including watching for the moment a listener gets lost
putting pauses in natural places
stressing the syllables in long words and finishing word endings
planning what to say before saying it, and telling a story in order

There are few treatment studies, so therapy is built around the child’s symptoms. Techniques designed to smooth a stutter, such as gentle starts to words, may not help cluttering.

At home, the most useful things are plain. Let your child finish without interrupting. Say what you did understand and ask for the part you missed. A reminder to slow down may help for a sentence or two, but it rarely lasts.

Where Dr Lauren’s work fits

Dr Lauren Crumlish (PhD) is a Certified Practising Speech Pathologist who works by video, Australia wide, with children and teenagers who stutter. The services this site describes are for stuttering. Read about Dr Lauren.

If you are not sure whether your child is stuttering, cluttering or both, the page on stuttering assessment explains what an assessment involves. Where stuttering is part of the picture, a parent or guardian can apply to work with Dr Lauren.

If your child’s speech is fast and unclear with no repetitions or blocks, look for a speech pathologist who lists cluttering or fluency among their areas of practice. Speech Pathology Australia’s Find a Speech Pathologist search lists practitioners by area of practice.