Can you help with this study?
Emily Lowther from Wayne State University, USA is looking at speech traits in people who have Down’s syndrome. You’ll find more information about Emily below.
To do this, Emily is collecting videos of people who have Down’s syndrome speaking as they would in daily life.
You can be any age to take part but:
- You need to speak English
- You must be able to speak in sentences
- You must be happy to be recorded
For the video, Emily will need a minimum of 50 utterances (sentences of 2+ words) to conduct the analysis.
Your videos can be uploaded to the study website, sent via WhatsApp to the dedicated research phone, or recorded by a researcher during a scheduled Zoom chat with the participant.
This study aims to get a better understanding of the speech traits common in people who have Down’s syndrome, and particularly those that affect speech fluency (i.e. flow or ease of talking). Emily hopes her findings will help us to develop strategies to address the issues that are making talking difficult and incorporate those approaches with those that support people’s overall communication needs.
To learn more, please visit the study website or feel free to contact Emily by email (emily.lowther@wayne.edu).
If you would like to take part, please click here to complete the consent form and a brief questionnaire.
Related documents
- Recruitment flyer
- Adult/parent information sheet
- Adolescent information sheet (for reading comprehension of 13-17 years)
- Child information sheet (for reading comprehension of 7-12 years)
- Tips for successful recording
Emily Lowther, MSpeechPath, CCC-SLP, is a doctoral student at Wayne State University investigating the speech traits of people who have Down Syndrome. Specifically, her work is aimed at quantifying speech norms for the population, and developing new therapeutic guidelines to improve intelligibility and quality-of-life through developmental, linguistic, motor-speech, and stuttering intervention strategies.