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Graduate Student Receives $42,000 NIH Grant for Research Aimed at Helping to Reduce Stuttering Writer: Angela Hains, 706/583-0811, anicole7@uga.edu Contact: Jason Davidow, 706/340-6539, jdavidow@uga.edu
Jason Davidow will further his stuttering research with the help of a $42,016 NIH grant
Graduate student Jason Davidow has committed his life to understanding what makes a person stutter. The California native personally knows the impact the speech disorder can have on one's life. He and his brother have had to overcome stuttering their entire lives.
“I want to know why people stutter, and I want to help people avoid going through the same stuff I dealt with growing up,” said Davidow, a fourth-year doctoral student in the speech-language pathology program.
Davidow will get a chance to further his research into stuttering after receiving a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award, a two-year $42,016 grant from the National Institutes of Health.
What research has taught us so far is that stuttering is partially a predisposed neurological and genetic disorder, he said.
His future project titled, “Phonated Intervals During Fluency-Inducing Conditions,” will investigate the timing of vocal cord movement during four fluency-inducing conditions (FICs) in people with this speech impediment. The four most powerful FIC methods that have been found to help reduce stuttering include: chorus reading (reading in unison with another person), rhythmic stimulation (producing one syllable or word at equally spaced intervals), prolonged speech and singing.
Davidow's study will focus on adults that have lived with this speech disorder their entire lives. If treated at an early enough age, there is a higher chance to relearn how to speak without stuttering.
Davidow aims to refine the current treatment method, Modifying Phonated Intervals (MPI), in order to alter the way the vocal cords vibrate during speech. The results from this study could benefit speech pathology clinicians around the world, according to his mentor, Anne Bothe, an associate professor in the department of communication sciences and special education.
“His research has the potential not only to improve our basic understanding of stuttering but also to improve our treatments, which is an important combination of ideas in an applied discipline like speech-language pathology,” said Bothe.
The opportunity to work with Bothe, who is currently in the middle of her own five-year, $1 million NIH project studying the measurement, treatment and recovery of pre-school stutterers, was one of the main reasons Davidow came to UGA.
It was Roger Ingham, his undergraduate mentor at the University of California-Santa Barbara where Davidow earned a bachelor's degree in psychology, who encouraged him to continue his education at UGA. He urged Davidow to study under Bothe, who just happened to be another of Ingham's students.
Davidow, who earned his master of arts in speech pathology at UGA, is scheduled to earn his Ph.D. in December 2006.
Rather than teaching classes this year, Davidow is concentrating on his dissertation, but in the past several years he has taught courses in fluency disorders. He hopes to continue his academic career as a professor at a Research-I university, so that he can pursue both research and teaching. He admits that teaching has been more gratifying then he expected.
“Some of the kids I teach will become clinicians, and what I learn in my research, I can relay to them. In turn, they can use it in their practice and help improve people's lives. It's very gratifying to know that you are helping people,” he said.
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