Direction of Research Conducted at
The Brock University Stuttering Research Laboratory
The Stuttering Research Laboratory at Brock University is dedicated to the study of stuttering from a neuropsychological perspective. The laboratory was established in the mid-1980's at Carleton University, and moved to Brock University with the laboratory's principal researcher, Prof. William G. Webster, in 1993 (with overlap between Brock and Carleton during the period between 1993 and 1996). Dr. Webster continues to work in consultation with David Forster, who completed his Ph.D. on the neuropsychology of stuttering under Dr. Webster's supervision. Recently, Dr. Webster has employed Glenn A. Theal as a research assistant in the laboratory. Glenn is responsible for numerous activities, which include conducting research and analyzing data as well as maintaining this web site.
Historically, there has been a controversy over the issue of whether stuttering has a "biological" or a "psychological" cause. An ever-increasing body of evidence, including that from this laboratory, is tipping the balance definitively to the biological side. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that the severity of stuttering among those people who stutter and the impact that stuttering has on their lives is very much related to experiential or psychological factors.
Our research has been directed towards answering the following two basic questions:
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What differences are there between the brains of people who stutter and those of fluent speakers, and how do those differences operate to cause the observable characteristics of stuttering? |
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What changes within a person who stutters from periods of fluency to periods of disfluency.? |
Related to that general approach are a number of more specific questions that we are attempting to address in our research:
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How do psychological and neurological influences on speech fluency interact with each other? |
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What underlies the variability across time and situations that is so characteristic of stuttering? |
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Why do some children who stutter seem to spontaneously "grow out
of it", while other people continue to stutter throughout their lives? |
Credits
©1997
Glenn A. Theal, Hons. B.A and David Forster, Ph.D.
 : stutter@www.brocku.ca
Created and Maintained with
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