Cluttered speech is a common term for speech that becomes broken down, cluttered, or unintelligible due to a variety of reasons. Cluttered speech is often described as hurried, nervous, broken down, stuttering, stammering, and cluttering. Cluttered speech happens extensively with the speech disorder of cluttering

Cluttering

Cluttering is a speech disorder and a communication disorder characterized by speech that is difficult for listeners to understand due to rapid speaking rate, erratic rhythm, poor syntax or grammar, and words or groups of words unrelated to the sentence...

, but is more commonly found in various disorders and especially in normal speech not associated with the disorder of cluttering.

Stuttering

The common usage of stuttering

Stuttering

Stuttering , also known as stammering , is a speech disorder in which the flow of speech is disrupted by involuntary repetitions and prolongations of sounds, syllables, words or phrases, and involuntary silent pauses or blocks in which the stutterer is unable to produce sounds...

 is more similar to cluttered speech than to the speech disorder of stuttering. The common usage of stuttering refers to the nervous speech type of cluttered speech.

Nervous speech

People who don't have the speech disorder of stuttering will often mention they are "stuttering" in conjunction with the initial breakdown of a beginning of a speech. An example is, "I was so nervous that I could barely talk above a whisper. I stuttered, mispronounced words, and dropped a baby doll that I was using as a demo."

This nervous speech is the most common type of cluttered speech, because all people do it to a degree.

Public speaking

The Art of Public Speaking refers to cluttered speech as speech that is not clear and compelling, speech that forces listeners to "hack through a tangle of words to discover meaning."

Children

All children exhibit cluttered speech, starting at age 2, and usually stopping at age 5. Many children do not reach a point where they are regularly using clear speech until age 8, sometimes older..

Cluttered Speech Disorders

Cluttered speech happens as a part of various disorders which affect the speech.

Cluttering

The associated disorder resulting in an overage of cluttered speech is cluttering

Cluttering

Cluttering is a speech disorder and a communication disorder characterized by speech that is difficult for listeners to understand due to rapid speaking rate, erratic rhythm, poor syntax or grammar, and words or groups of words unrelated to the sentence...

, in which speech becomes so cluttered that it becomes unintelligible, frequently through an overage of normal disfluencies such as repetitions, revisions, and interjections.

Fragile X Syndrome

Cluttered speech is a common symptom of Fragile X Syndrome

Fragile X syndrome

Fragile X syndrome , Martin–Bell syndrome, or Escalante's syndrome , is a genetic syndrome that is the most commonly known single-gene cause of autism and the most common inherited cause of intellectual disability...

. People with Fragile X with a higher IQ exhibit cluttered speech including disfluencies and stuttering

Pressured speech

Pressured speech is rapid, accelerated, frenzied speech that is a type of cluttered speech, which is typically associated with mania

Mania

Mania, the presence of which is a criterion for certain psychiatric diagnoses, is a state of abnormally elevated or irritable mood, arousal, and/ or energy levels. In a sense, it is the opposite of depression...

s or hypomania

Hypomania

Hypomania is a mood state characterized by persistent and pervasive elevated or irritable mood, as well as thoughts and behaviors that are consistent with such a mood state...

.

Dyslexia

A symptom of dyslexia is the breakdown of speech, or cluttered speech.. Cluttered speech in young people with dyslexia is often accompanied by hyperactivity.

Parkinson's

Michael J. Fox

Michael J. Fox

Michael J. Fox, OC is a Canadian American actor, author, producer, activist and voice-over artist. With a film and television career spanning from the late 1970s, Fox's roles have included Marty McFly from the Back to the Future trilogy ; Alex P...

struggled with "cluttered speech" in conjunction with voice weakening due to Parkinson's.. He also said, "These impediments to self-expression are not the most painful or debilitating features of Parkinson's disease, yet they madden me more than even the most teeth-rattling full body tremor."