One population consists of those who have poor language development despite normal sensory, nonverbal intellectual and social affective status. These children have been referred to as specific language impaired (SLI). The laboratory has been following a large cohort of children with and without SLI since they entered kindergarten 10 years ago. Repeated assessments of language, reading, behavior, and school performance have been conducted in order to document long-term outcomes.
Additionally, studies have been conducted regarding several cognitive, neurological, and genetic characteristics of these children. Research methods employed in this work have spanned molecular genetics, brain imaging (fMRI and electrophysiological), cognitive psychological designs, connectionist modeling, and epidemiologic studies.
A second population being studied consists of children who have hearing losses. The focus of this work is on those children with severe to profound hearing impairment who have received cochlear implants. This research has asked about long-term speech, language, and reading outcomes of these children and factors that impact on the individual differences in these outcomes. Research methods employed in this work consist of speech and language measures and -- because many of these children are infants -- the methods have included contemporary infant paradigms that exploit looking responses associated with linguistic stimuli (preferential looking, head-turn preference).
This
research is being supported by several grants from the National Institute
on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.