research overview
- Dr. Pollard’s research focuses in the areas of fluency disorders and neuroscience. His work examines the neural mechanisms of typical and disordered speech motor control, as well as treatment outcomes for persons who stutter (PWS). His outcomes work examines both traditional approaches to therapy, such as intensive service delivery, and less traditional interventions such as electronic devices using altered auditory feedback to improve fluency. Dr. Pollard’s studies utilize a multidimensional approach to analyzing treatment effectiveness. Unlike most historical work in this area, he collects and analyzes measures of affective and cognitive symptoms of stuttering, in addition to more overt, behavioral features of the disorder. He has investigated social anxiety in PWS and specific protocols that may alleviate social anxiety in this population. He has also studied therapy preferences for young PWS and refined group treatment approaches for this population. More recently he has developed cross-disciplinary events that platform the voices of disabled people and published literary fiction centering the experiences of disabled characters.