Association of hair and eye color with handedness and stuttering

Abstract The literature suggests that hair and eye color reflect susceptibility to developmental learning disorders such as stuttering. We examined the relationship among handedness, hair and eye color, and stuttering. A survey of 199 stutterers asked questions about handedness, original hair color, gender, and age. Results indicated that stutterers were more non-right-handed than non-sutterers. For this group of stutterers, disfluency severity was greater among those with blond hair and blue eyes. Stuttering severity was also related to gender, with a greater percentage of males being rated as “severe,” while a larger percentage of the females were identified as being “very severe.” It is suggested that the observed findings may be due to the influence of testosterone and hypopigmentation factors.