LANGUAGE FLUENCY LABORATORY
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FLUENCY BANK

FluencyBank is a shared database for the study of the development of fluency in both typical and disordered populations. Participants include typically-developing monolingual and bilingual children, children and adults who stutter (C/AWS) or who clutter (C/AWC), and second language learners. ​
https://fluency.talkbank.org/

Grants to support the lab's work in stuttering and fluency come from: 

  • NIDCD: 1 R01 DC015494-01 (Brian MacWhinney, co-PI). A shared database for the study of the development of language fluency. 2016-2021
  • NSF BCS-1626300/1626294: The development of language fluency across childhood. N. Bernstein Ratner (PI) & B. MacWhinney, Co-I (Collaborative Research). 2016-2019
  • NIDCD R01DC307764-0000 (PI: Brian MacWhhinney, N. Bernstein Ratner, co-PI) Phon Bank Integration with TalkBank (2022-2027) 
  • First CASE grant, National Stuttering Association. Validating recommendations made to the parents of children who stutter. (PI: N. Bernstein Ratner. 2022-24).

​Ongoing Projects

​​Fluency development project

This project examines the relationship between the fluency of children's speech and their language skills.
We are following 90 children (typical monolingual, bilingual, stuttering and late talking) over the course of three years to track language and fluency growth. Data will be added to our open-access archive of language samples and supporting documentation (TalkBank/CHILDES Project).

This research is being conducted by Dr. Nan Bernstein Ratner at the University of Maryland, College Park and Dr. Brian MacWhinney at Carnegie-Mellon University.  

If you are interested in participating, please click here.

Publications


​MacWhinney, B. (2019). Understanding spoken language through TalkBank. Behavior research methods, 51(4), 1919-1927.
doi.org/10.3758/s13428-018-1174-9
​

​Bernstein Ratner, N. (2018). Selecting treatments and monitoring outcomes: The circle of evidence-based practice and client-centered care in treating a preschool child who stutters. Language, speech, and hearing services in schools, 49(1), 13-22. doi.org/10.1044/2017_LSHSS-17-0015

Bernstein, N. R., & MacWhinney, B. (2018). Fluency Bank: A new resource for fluency research and practice. Journal of fluency disorders, 56, 69-80. doi:10.1016/j.jfludis.2018.03.002

MacWhinney, B., Fromm, D., Rose, Y., & Bernstein Ratner, N. (2018). Fostering human rights through TalkBank. International journal of speech-language pathology, 20(1), 115-119. doi:10.1080/17549507.2018.1392609

Leech, K. A., Bernstein Ratner, N., Brown, B., & Weber, C. M. (2017). Preliminary evidence that growth in productive language differentiates childhood stuttering persistence and recovery. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 60(11), 3097-3109. doi.org/10.1044/2017_JSLHR-S-16-0371

Luckman, C. R. (2017). A large-scale analysis of lexical diversity in children who stutter (Master's Thesis). University of Maryland, College Park, MD. drum.lib.umd.edu/handle/1903/19950

Brundage, S. B., Bernstein Ratner, N., et al. (2021). Consensus guidelines for the assessment of Individuals who Stutter across the lifespan. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. 30(6):2379-2393. doi: 10.1044/2021_AJSLP-21-00107. PMID: 34516299; PMCID: PMC9132036.

Lescht, E., Dickey, M., Stockbridge, M. & Bernstein Ratner, N.  (2022). Adults who stutter show diminished word fluency, regardless of mode. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 65(3), 906-922.
 doi: 10.1044/2021_JSLHR-21-00344. PMID: 35133869; PMCID: PMC9150734.

Brundage, S. B. & Bernstein Ratner, N. (2022). Research updates in stuttering. Topics in Language Disorders,
 42(1), 5-23. DOI: 10.1097/TLD.0000000000000269; PMID: 35321534 PMCID: PMC8936424.

Garbarino, J. & Bernstein Ratner, N. (2022). What is the role of questioning in young children's fluency? American Journal of Speech Language Pathology, 2061-2077. https://doi.org/10.1044/2022_AJSLP-21-00209 PMCID: PMC7225019

Garbarino, J., Exton, E. L., & Bernstein Ratner, N. (2022, July 1). A psycholinguistic analysis of word-final repetitions. PsyArXiv, https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/5hwfn

Chow, H.-M., Garnett, E., Bernstein Ratner, N. & Chang, S.-E. (2023). Brain activity during the preparation and production of spontaneous speech in children with
persistent stuttering. Neuroimage Clinical. doi: 10.1016/j.nicl.2023.103413. PMID: 37099876

Garbarino, J. & Bernstein Ratner, N. (2023) Stalling for time: Stall, revision and stuttering-like disfluencies reflect language factors in the speech of young children. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 66, 2018-2034. https://doi.org/10.1044/2023_JSLHR-22-00595; PMID: 37224005

Oppenheimer, K., Lee, J. Huang, Y.-T. & Bernstein Ratner (2023). Decontextualized utterances contain more typical and stuttering-like disfluencies in preschoolers who do and do not stutter. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 66(8), 2656-2669. https://doi.org/10.1044/2023_JSLHR-23-00173 PMID 37486762

Bernstein Ratner, N. & Brundage, S.B. (2023). Advances in understanding stuttering as a disorder of language encoding. Annual Review of Linguistics, 10, 6.1-6.17
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-030521-044754  

Onslow, M., Lowe, R., Jakšić, S. J., Bernstein Ratner, N., Chmela, K., Lim, V., & Sheedy, S. (2023). The Fifth Croatia Stuttering Symposium: Part I. Treatments for early stuttering. Journal of Fluency Disorders, 106022. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfludis.2023.106022

Burns, M. & Bernstein Ratner, N. (2023). It’s just that simple: Parental language complexity in early childhood stuttering. In Wagovich, S. (Ed.) Proceedings of the World Congress on Stuttering and Cluttering.
https://web.archive.org/web/20231022192016/https://www.theifa.org/ifa-congresses-2/ifa-congress-proceedings/2022-jwc-proceedings.html

Godsey, A. & Bernstein Ratner, N. (2023). All in good time: A preliminary study of parent-child turn taking in early stuttering. In Wagovich, S. (Ed.) Proceedings of the World Congress on Stuttering and Cluttering.
https://web.archive.org/web/20231022192016/https://www.theifa.org/ifa-congresses-2/ifa-congress-proceedings/2022-jwc-proceedings.html;

Godsey, A. & Nan Bernstein Ratner (2024). All in good time: Parent-Child turn-taking in early stuttering. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. 34(1), 333-346. https://doi-org.proxy-um.researchport.umd.edu/10.1044/2024_AJSLP-24-00155

Bernstein Ratner, N. & S. B. Brundage (2025). Evidence-based practice in stuttering 20 years later: some questions to consider. Journal of Fluency Disorders.​

ASHA Posters
I’m not convinced: SLPs need logic-based analysis to assess persuasive writing of individuals with autism
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Hard to keep your heritage: Language attrition in Spanish-English bilingual preschoolers over a single year
File Size: 1238 kb
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Investigating the effect of parental question input on children with ASD enrolled in PLAY Intervention
File Size: 537 kb
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Factors influencing child language growth in a DIR/Floortime intervention for preschoolers with autism
File Size: 494 kb
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overton_perry_builes_lee_asha_poster_2019_how_long_nbr_first_page_only.pptx
File Size: 1717 kb
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Stranger things: Parents and strangers demonstrate different fine-tuning in CwLLE
File Size: 200 kb
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Contact
Language and Fluency Lab
Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences
0220 LeFrak Hall
University of Maryland, College Park 20742
(301) 405-4458
[email protected]
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