The Influence of Contextual and Constitutional Emotional Processes on Speech Motor Control and Speech Motor Learning in Early Childhood Stuttering

Victoria Tumanova (CSD) PI, Rachel Razza (HDFS) co-I, Qiu Wang (SOE) co-I, and Asif Salekin (EECS) co-I,
Extramural Sponsored Project – National Institutes of Health (NIH), 3/1/21-2/28/24

The goals of this project are to advance the understanding of stuttering development in preschool-age children and inform future fluency treatment. Specifically, the researchers are interested in how different aspects of emotional reactivity influence children’s speech motor control and speech motor learning. For this project, researchers will collect physiological and parent-report data on both children who stutter and children who do not stutter to examine the roles of contextual (or situational) emotional regulation and constitutional (or temperamental-based) behavioral inhibition on measures of speech articulation and speech motor learning. These data will also document the “real-time” influence of emotional processes on speech.