This is an anecdote that still does nothing to prove that cowardice or general social meekness causes speech disfluency. There are plenty of legitimate studies being done, you should check them out. >The report, entitled "Results of a Genome-wide Linkage Scan for Stuttering," demonstrates that a gene on chromosome 18 in humans can have a strong effect on the development of persistent stuttering. While the gene itself has not been identified, this study demonstrates that inherited factors in stuttering are significant enough that it's possible to identify specific genetic factors. >"While we have a way to go before we can identify this gene, we are encouraged that progress is being made," said Dennis Drayna, Ph.D., senior author of the study. Dr. Drayna is pursuing his studies at the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, part of the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, MD. >While his recent study involved more than 50 families from across North America, Drayna is pursing additional studies elsewhere in the world. A previous article in the SFA News documented one family under study in Cameroon, West Africa, and recent efforts have taken Drayna to Pakistan, where the high number of cousin marriages present particularly favorable conditions for genetic studies of stuttering. http://www.stutteringhelp.org/genetic-studies-gain-ground >The genetic discoveries clearly demonstrate stuttering is a biological disorder, Drayna noted. "This takes us further away from the view that stuttering is caused by interactions with other people, or that it is a social disorder or an emotional disorder." That may help remove the stigma associated with stuttering, he said. http://www.fic.nih.gov/News/GlobalHealthMatters/may-june-2014/Pages/nidcd-global-health-stutter.aspx >Our research, in combination with that from other laboratories, suggests that, although stuttering is expressed as a failure of the motor areas of the brain to generate the right muscle commands for speech to proceed, the explanation of why this happens involves the interaction of the brain=s motor areas with other brain systems, including those involved in emotional, cognitive, and linguistic processing. Thus our experiments are designed to test hypotheses such as this: if linguistic processing demands are great (or emotional arousal is high or memory load is great), the motor areas of the brain cannot perform as well in generating muscle command signals. The next phase of our NIH project on stuttering focuses on the interaction of language and motor factors. Anne Smith, Ph.D., Winter 1999-2000 Purdue University >What this also suggests is that the even when a PWS is fluent, as many are when choral reading, speaking alone or to a pet, the neurologic flaw is still there. Many PWS and speech-language pathologists (SLPs) hold the misguided notion that this situational fluency experienced by PWS indicates that stuttering must be due to psychologic or emotional causes. Such situational fluency indicates only that developmental stuttering is probably not caused by a lesion or overt damage as is acquired stuttering, which tends not to show such variability. I believe that this situational fluency (the Primary Paradox) experienced by PWS can be explained by my excitation feedback component of stuttering, which may be due to a flaw in the brain's limbic areas in PWS https://www.mnsu.edu/comdis/kuster/harkness1.html There's far more research out there than just this. Almost all of it agrees that stuttering is likely inherited, and isn't a psychological problem. You're not stuttering because you're a meek or cowardly person. It isn't a personality flaw. You're stuttering because your brain isn't communicating with your mouth and diaphragm properly.