How stuttering is manifested across languages
An ISF-funded study investigating how stuttering is expressed across different languages in bilingual children.
Dr. Sveta Fichman and Dr. Dvora Freud
Click to participateCheck out our current research!
Bilingualism and Stuttering Research Lab
We study how children growing up with more than one language experience stuttering — and how clinicians, researchers, and families can better understand it.
Participate in our research!
We are inviting children who stutter and children who do not stutter — ages 7–17 who speak English, Russian, French, Yiddish, Amharic, Arabic, or Spanish at home (plus Hebrew). We also welcome children who speak only Hebrew.
English · Hebrew · Russian · Yiddish · French · Arabic · Amharic · Spanish
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We are inviting children who stutter and children who do not stutter
Sign up hereOur current projects
Our vision: Each child is unique; bilingualism and speech patterns like stuttering are simply manifestations of that uniqueness. In our lab, we translate this philosophy into action. Through large-scale studies, we work to better understand these diverse communication profiles to provide every child with the support they deserve.
Prevalence of stuttering in bilinguals
A NIPI-funded study measuring how often stuttering occurs in bilingual populations compared with monolingual peers.
Dr. Sveta Fichman
Click to participateIs bilingualism really an advantage? Israel is the best research lab ever!
Did you know? More than 50 different languages are spoken in Israel, and over 50% of children are raised bilingual.
Who are Heritage Speakers? What is a Heritage Language?
Heritage speakers grow up with a language at home that is different from the majority language around them. Their development is rich, unique, and often misunderstood.
Stuttering is manifested differently in each child. Observed stuttering may be different from the child's own experience.
When does stuttering first appear?
Stuttering typically begins between ages 2 and 5, during the most rapid period of language development.
What should I do?
Early awareness and supportive communication make a difference. Our For Parents page walks you through what to expect and when to seek help.
Why this matters
We aim to create a large database of speech — stuttered and non-stuttered — from bilingual speakers of different languages. This helps us understand how language proficiency interacts with stuttering, and whether stuttering changes depending on which language a child is speaking.
Our Vision
Bridging science and empathy
Rigorous research that stays human — useful to the families living the questions we study.
Bilingualism is an asset
Bilingual children and adults have a unique, rich language development. We treat it as a strength, not a complication.
Why both together?
Because current clinical tools are built for monolingual populations. We want to change that.
Meet Our Researchers
Dr. Sveta Fichman
Principal Investigator
Dr. Sveta Fichman is a clinical linguist, researcher, and university lecturer specializing in the complex interaction of bilingualism, language acquisition, and atypical speech and language development. She holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Linguistics and serves as a faculty member and lecturer at several academic institutions, including Jerusalem Interdisciplinary College (Department of Communication Disorders) and Talpiot College of Education (Child Development). Her current research focuses on manifestations of stuttering in children and adolescents from diverse Heritage Language backgrounds. In 2026, she and Dr. Dvora Freud were awarded a prestigious Israel Science Foundation (ISF) grant to lead a multidisciplinary study investigating communication strategies and attitudes among bilingual school-age children.
Dr. Dvora Freud
Co-Principal Investigator
Dr. Dvora Freud co-leads our ISF-funded project on stuttering across languages. Her research sits at the intersection of speech-language pathology, bilingualism, and clinical practice with Hebrew-speaking and heritage-language communities.
Explore Our Research
We present our research in ways that serve different audiences. Pick the perspective most relevant to you.
Bilingualism did not cause your child's stutter
Stuttering has neurological roots. Bilingualism does not cause it. Children who stutter benefit from keeping all their languages — dropping the home language does not improve fluency, and weakens family connection.
Bilingualism is an asset, not a complication
Bilingual children reach the same developmental milestones as monolingual peers. Their total vocabulary across languages is comparable, and the cognitive flexibility that bilingualism supports has lifelong benefits.
Monolingual norms misfire in bilingual assessment
Standardized stuttering assessments were developed on monolingual populations. When applied to bilingual children without adjustment, they produce systematic over- and under-identification. Pairing these tools with culturally informed norms reduces misclassification.
OASES is a useful starting point for multilingual caseloads
The OASES assessment captures how stuttering affects the speaker's life beyond observable disfluencies. In bilingual clinical work, pairing it with language-specific disfluency sampling yields a fuller picture than either approach alone.
Israel as a natural laboratory for bilingual speech research
More than 50 languages are spoken in Israel, and over half of Israeli children are raised bilingual. This density of language contact — combined with a relatively small geographic footprint — creates conditions for collecting typologically diverse data without the usual logistical overhead.
Cross-linguistic disfluency sampling: methodological notes
Our ISF project pairs free-speech and structured-elicitation tasks in each of the child's languages, timing-matched to control for language activation effects. The sampling protocol, stimulus set, and coding manual are available upon request.