Get involved

Talk Bank --- Fluency Bank

FluencyBank (talkbank.fluency.org) continues to solicit donations of speech/language samples from

individuals who stutter/clutter or have other fluency disorders, across the lifespan. While we always

welcome research data, our most popular links are those used for teaching, including Voices of

Adults who Stutter and Voices of Children who Stutter. Instructors and students have been able to

explore fully open-access, free video and written contributions from over 30 adults and numerous

children, in learning about the affective, cognitive and behavioral features of fluency disorders.

Professors and students also can access numerous ideas for using the materials in classroom

assignments and exercises.

Three years ago, the ICA worked with FluencyBank to develop a protocol for collecting samples

from adults who clutter. However, to date, we have received only one contribution, and the site is not

able to offer instructors and students the benefits of the other Voices projects. We'd like to ask ICA

members to consider donating data to the FluencyBank project. Instructions for how to do so can be

found here: https://fluency.talkbank.org/teaching/AWC.html

While we may not be able to use archival video that was not consented for this purpose, our federal

funding (NIDCD) does allow us to extract audio and de-identify contributions. We are able to accept

data in many languages, not solely English. If you are interested, we recommend that you write to

Nan Ratner at nratner@umd.edu to explore possibilities for your data to help educate clinicians

around the world.

Nan Bernstein Ratner, F-, H-ASHA, F-AAAS, ABCLD

Professor

Hearing and Speech Sciences

University of Maryland

0100 Lefrak Hall

College Park, MD 20742