Positive Conditions

Subtle changes in mood or attitude often greatly increase or decrease fluency, with many stutterers developing tricks or methods to achieve temporary fluency. Stutterers commonly report dramatically increased fluency when singing, whispering or starting speech from a whisper, speaking extremely slowly, speaking in chorus, speaking without hearing their own voice (e.g., speaking over loud music), speaking with a metronome or other rhythm, speaking with an artificial accent or voice, speaking in a foreign dialect, or when speaking while hearing their own voice with a minuscule delay or pitch change. Stutterers also display increased fluency when speaking to nonjudgmental listeners, such as pets, children, or speech pathologists. It is perhaps most interesting to note that most stutterers experience extraordinary levels of fluency when talking to themselves. A rare few even experience increased fluency when they exclusively "have the floor" (public speaking or teaching), when they are intoxicated, or when they are explicitly trying to stutter. There is no universally accepted explanation for these phenomena.