The mission of the Language Fluency Lab at the University of Maryland, College Park is to understand the development of fluent speech production and the acquisition of language. A typical adult speaker can converse at between 150 to over 200 words per minute, well in excess of even the most talented "texter" or typist. How do we learn to do this? Why do some speakers (such as children and adults who stutter) have difficulty moving easily from one word to the next when speaking?
Here at the Language Fluency Lab, we study the acquisition of expressive language in young children; we also study the onset and development of stuttering, in order to find more effective ways to identify children at risk, and effectively treat stuttering across the lifespan. Some of our other projects study the role that adult input plays in children's language development, profiles of language acquisition in late talkers, children that speak African-American English, children who are bilingual, children with autism (ASD), and children with seizure disorder (epilepsy).
The Language Fluency Lab sponsors FluencyBank, part of TalkBank (www.talkbank.org), and the Child Language Assessment Project (CLASP). Currently, the Language Fluency Lab at UMD is supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIDCD) 1 R01 DC015494-01 (Brian MacWhinney, Carnegie-Mellon University, Co-PI), and the National Science Foundation (NSF BCS-1626300/1626294): N. Bernstein Ratner (PI) & B. MacWhinney, (Co-PI) (Collaborative Research).