Lexico-semantic abilities in early language growth and delay

Purdue University, West Lafayette IN

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

Project Summary: Children with language disorders are at risk for a host of negative health and academic consequences, and represent at least 7% of the school-aged population. This project addresses two critical public-health needs regarding language disorders: (1) Characterizing early language skill trajectories with the goal of (2) Improving early identification. The administrative supplement, supported by the Tackling Acquisition of Language in Kids (TALK) initiative seeks to expand the ability of the parent grant to build a wider array of assessments into a longitudinal study that examines language development trajectories in children with a wide range of language skills between the ages of 18 to 48 months. Specifically, this supplement will allow us to add new expertise to our team that can support new analysis of existing vocabulary trajectories in the dataset (Aim 1), and will support an additional wave of data collection when children in the sample are 3-years of age (Aim 2). Specifically, Aim 2 measures will focus on adding measures to assess aspects of language, speech, and pre- literacy skills that extend beyond the parent grant focus on lexico-semantic skills. These new measures from Aim 1 and 2 will then support future analysis (Aim 3) of how the new measures from Aim 1 and 2 relate to planned measures in the parent grant that assess language, speech, and literacy skills at age 4. This project will therefore advance our understanding of early language growth trajectories in children with and without early delays in communicative skills, and will enhance our ability to detect early language disorders by supporting a wider range of potential markers longer-term delays that extend beyond the scope of the parent grant.