Interpersonal Neurophysiology Lab

In everyday life, our cognitive abilities, emotions, and motor skills interact to create fluent interactions with the world, particular other people. In some situations and for some populations, these social interactions are often challenging.

About the Interpersonal Neurophysiology Lab

We focus on understanding how cognitive, linguistic, and motoric factors, and their interactions, contribute to fluency in speech performance. We seek to better understand how the demands of communication in everyday life contributes to fluency and motor speech disorders

Speech Motor Performance

Individual differences in speech motor performance affect the effectiveness and ease of our everyday communication

Motivation & Cognition

Individual differences in motivational direction and intensity, as well as cognitive control, affect our speech-language production in everyday life

Language

Individual differences in linguistic abilities, from syntax to pragmatics, affect speech performance

Our Research

We define ‘fluency’ as the efficiency of goal-directed action in our everyday interactions with the world. Simply put, fluency is the embodiment of the principle of least action, from which fast, smooth, and effortless behavior emerges from the optimal balance of the capacity to act (including knowledge and motivation) and the active realization of that capacity. Fluent behaviors emerge when an agent’s capacity and activity are minimized over time. Disorders of speech fluency, such as stuttering and cluttering, can be conceptualized as the involuntary, transient, and chronic failure of sustaining this minimization process, resulting in overt moments of inhibition or ‘stuckness’ in the initiation of syllables (classically categorized as speech blocks, prolongations, and repetitions) and a more covert metacognitive lack of agency in communication, such as conflicting motivations, avoidance behaviors, and feelings of fear and shame in communicative environments. 

Our lab focuses on the neurophysiological and behavioral markers of fluency in speech-language production, including the relevant cognitive, emotional, linguistic, and motoric processes that underlie fluency and fluency disorders, such as stuttering. 

In our laboratory, we use electrophysiological, acoustic, kinematic, and and computational methods to better understand fluency with the goal of improving assessment and treatment approaches for clinicians in speech-language pathology and other health professions. We research speech and language ability at multiple levels of analysis, includes measures of speech rhythm and fragmentation (acoustics), brain function (EEG and fMRI), autonomic nervous system activation, neuromuscular activation (EMG), articulatory kinematics (motion capture), and perceptible speech behavior. 

Current Projects

Remote Study of Speech Production

Currently Recruiting Children and Adults Who Do or Do Not Stutter and/or Clutter.
If you would like to participate, please send us your information below! 

EEG Study of Motivation & Speech Production

Currently Recruiting Children and Adults Who Do and Do Not Stutter and/or Clutter
If you would like to participate, please send us your information below! 

Participate in a Study

The Interpersonal Neurophysiology Lab, within the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Delaware, is located in the sixth floor of the Tower at STAR, in Newark, Delaware.

We are currently recruiting people with and without fluency disorders (stuttering/cluttering) between the ages of 8 and 65. If you would like to participate in a current study, or would like to learn more, contact our research team at:

stutteringproject@udel.edu

The Tower at STAR | College of Health Sciences | University of Delaware
100 Discovery Blvd | Room 628
Newark, DE 19713