Currently Approved NSARC Approved Projects

A team of graduate students from the NC State University are evaluating a fluency device invented in the Product Innovation Lab last semester. They are seeking people who stutter and Speech-Language Pathologists to take the survey to understand whether the device would be valuable to the stuttering community. The survey for both people who stutter and SLP’s.

If you do wish to contact the graduate student group with questions about the survey or their project, please feel free to call or email Ty Hagler at 919-724-2439 or jthagler@ncsu.edu

Please visit the Survey Page! (map link: http://sgiz.mobi/s3/28c721607c0a)
We'll be sure to send a copy of the research results and to acknowledge NSA in our final presentation.

We are looking for both people who stutter and people who do not stutter age 21-50. Aside from stuttering exhibited by the adults who stutter, participants will be required to have no known hearing, language or neurological difficulties. For the purposes of this study, we can only include people for whom English is the first and only fluent language.

Participants will be asked to complete a battery of tests that require an individual to answer questions or perform verbal tasks to determine phonological processing skills and vocabulary skills. These tests take approximately 2 hours to complete (but can sometimes take as long as 2 1/2 hours). Participants will be paid $15 as compensation for participation.

If you are interested in helping us learn more about stuttering and would like to participate, please contact Kristin either by email (kpelczarski@gmail.com) or by phone (412-260-1588).

Behnaz Abolmaali &

It is hypothesized that a majority of SLPs – even those who work with clients who stutter – will have little or no direct experience with stuttering support groups. It is further hypothesized that those who do participate will experience a number of benefits, including increased knowledge of stuttering, and enhanced competence working with clients who stutter.

The study will attempt to answer the following research questions:

1) How knowledgeable are SLPs about support group resources for people who stutter?
2) How often and under what circumstances do SLPS refer clients who stutter to support groups?
3) What benefits do SLPs derive form their participation in support groups for people who stutter?
4) In what capacity do SLPs prefer to participate in support groups?
 

James M. Brinton

Jim McClure

&

The National Stuttering Association and Friends, The Association of Young People Who Stutter, are conducting a survey on the experience of children, teens and young adults who stutter. If you work with children who stutter, we will appreciate your help in letting their parents know about this survey and inviting them to participate. Your teen and young adult clients may participate in the survey as well.

The online questionnaire asks about the impact of stuttering on the lives of children, and about their experience with stuttering treatment and support groups. The survey includes questions specifically directed at parents as well as teens and young adults who stutter.

If you wish to look at the questionnaire yourself, you may preview it by clicking on this link or pasting it into your browser: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/38KK955

Parents and teens may begin the questionnaire by clicking on this link or pasting it into their browsers: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QX6H6RF

The survey should take about 15 minutes to complete. Individual responses are confidential, and will be combined with other responses for statistical results. Survey findings will be posted on both the NSA and Friends web sites.

The survey findings will be used to educate the public about stuttering, and to give speech professionals greater insight into the issues faced by children and teens who stutter and their parents.

For more information, contact Jim McClure at:

The Language Section of the National Institute on Deafness and Communication Disorders is recruiting participants who stutter for a behavioral and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study of anticipation in stuttering. Many people who stutter report that they have had the experience of predicting when they are going to have problems speaking. We want to find out exactly how often this happens, and how accurate these predictions are. We also want to know what brain regions are involved in making these predictions, and how similar these regions are to those that are active when dysfluencies are occurring.

To do this, we want to use fMRI to perform brain scans of people who stutter while they are performing a few speech tasks, like reading selected passages and having a conversation with an experimenter. All the while, we will be asking our participants to indicate when they think they are about to have trouble speaking.  This will test a major theory about why stuttering happens, and will tell us more about the neurology of stuttering.

Participants can take part in this study at either the main campus of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, or at the University of Maryland, College Park (both Metro-accessible). Participants can choose to take part in just the behavioral testing portion of the study, or the whole study, including fMRI. Participants will be compensated for their time.

The purpose of this study is to determine how children and adults who stutter perceive their ability to overcome stuttering.  Participants will be monolingual Standard American English speaking males and females who exhibit stuttering in the age range 8 years old through adult.  Participants are required to travel to Worcester State College, Worcester, MA for one evaluation session that will last approximately 45 minutes.  The evaluation will include stuttering behaviors and attitudes as well as computerized questionnaire for mindset of stuttering.  There is no cost to participate; in fact, participants will received a $20.00 gift card to Target at the conclusion of the evaluation.  Please contact me if you would like to learn more about my study or be a participant:  kmelnick@worcester.edu or (508) 929-8836.  Thank you!

You are being invited to take part in a research study about the relationship between severity of stuttering in adults and their perceptions of quality of life. The purpose of this study is to determine if there is a statistically significant relationship between severity of stuttering and quality of life. We hope to learn about this relationship by comparing the scores of people who stutter on the Stuttering Severity Instrument-4^th edition (SSI-4; Riley, 1994), the Medical Outcomes Study Short Form (SF-36; Ware, 1993), and the Overall Assessment of the Speaker’s Experience of Stuttering (OASES; Yaruss & Quesal, 2008) for adults who stutter (AWS).

Participants should be in the age range of 18 to 65 years, have previously sought treatment for stuttering, and in generally good health.

If you decide to take part in the study, it should be because you really want to volunteer. You will not lose any benefits or rights you would normally have if you choose not to volunteer. You can stop at any time during the study and still keep the benefits and rights you had before volunteering.

If you have any difficulties, questions, or concerns regarding this study, please contact me at:

brandy_combs45@eku.edu

The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of processing demand on production in adults who stutter (AWS). Evidence for language-related processing difficulties in AWS is emerging, yet inconclusive about the specific linguistic processes that might relate to fluency breakdown. It is possible that not all tasks are sensitive in reflecting subtle difficulties in online linguistic processing. This study will examine selected processes of word production under varying levels of processing demand. The goal of the study is to determine if there is deficiency at specific levels of linguistic processing during production and how processing demand affect production performances in adults who do and do not stutter.

We welcome individuals who are 1) native English speakers, 2) over 18 years old, 3) diagnosed with developmental stuttering, 4) have normal or corrected vision, and 5) no other communication disorders.