About Us

Mission Statement:

To investigate the importance of emotions and language in childhood stuttering, yielding advances in science and treatment.

Current Work:

Emotional and linguistic contributions to developmental stuttering

The research team is collecting measurements of emotional arousal such as heart rate and galvanic skin response (i.e., measures small amounts of sweat on fingertips), observing emotional behaviors, and asking parents about their children's emotions. These are considered along with with speech, language, and hearing tests to study how emotions and conversational speech and language influence stuttering and other disfluencies.

Facilities and Personnel:

The Vanderbilt Developmental Stuttering Labs are housed in two locations: the Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center in Medical Center East and Jesup Hall on Vanderbilt's Peabody campus. The team consists primarily of PhD's and graduate students in the Vanderbilt Departments of Hearing and Speech Sciences and Developmental Psychology. Learn more about our locations or contact us for more information.

Principal Investigators:

Tedra Walden, Ph.D.

Tedra A. Walden is a Professor in the Psychology and Human Development Department at Peabody College, Vanderbilt University. She received her PhD from the University of Florida. Her interests are focused on early social-emotional development of young children and she has a long history of working with children with disabilities. Read more

Robin Jones, Ph.D.

Robin Jones is an Assistant Professor in the Hearing and Speech Sciences Department at Vanderbilt School of Medicine, Vanderbilt University. He received his PhD from Vanderbilt University. His main research interests involve the study of emotional and speech-language contributions to childhood stuttering. Read more

Edward G. Conture, Ph.D.

Edward G. Conture is a Professor Emeritus in the Hearing and Speech Sciences Department at Vanderbilt School of Medicine, Vanderbilt University. He received his PhD from the University of Iowa. His main research interests relate to the emotional, linguistic, and physiological contributions to developmental stuttering in young children. Read more