Faculty Directory

Co-Investigator

• The Atypical Disfluency Project
• How Autism affects understanding in multitalker environments
• Speech and nonspeech predictors of later language development
• Early perceptual, cognitive and linguistic skills in infants at-risk for autism
• The effect of sports-related concussion on children’s language skills

Research examples

Evaluation of the Play and Language for Autistic Youngsters (PLAY) Project Home Consultation

Repeat after me! Boosting toddler vocabulary

BACKGROUND

Nan Bernstein Ratner is Professor, Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park. She is a Fellow and Honors recipient of the American Speech, Language and Hearing Association (ASHA).

Her primary areas of research are fluency development and disorder (stuttering), psycholinguistics and the role of adult input and interaction in child language development. The author of numerous research articles, chapters and edited texts, she is the co-author of A Handbook on Stuttering (6th ed) with the late Oliver Bloodstein, as well as The Development of Language (7th ed) and Psycholinguistics (2nd ed.), both with Jean Berko Gleason. She is a Board-recognized Specialist in Child Language Disorders. In 2006, Professor Bernstein Ratner received the Distinguished Researcher award from the International Fluency Association. In 2014, she was made a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Dr. Ratner also publishes in the areas of Evidence-Based Practice in Communication Disorders. 

• Typical speech and language development in infants and children
• Childhood communication disorders
• The role of parents in language development 
• Typical fluency and fluency disorders, such as stuttering 
• Roles of evidence-based practice and information literacy in the conduct of speech-language pathology