The Path to Language and Literacy: A Cross-Linguistic Longitudinal Approach

描述(由申请者提供)：了解早期识字的发展道路，这取决于早期语言理解和产生以及支持它的活动，是心理学和教育学研究的优先事项。这与长期以来的重点一致，即确定哪些儿童在发育早期有最大的语言延迟风险。这些孩子在学习上也有困难的危险。在理解和产出方面都有缺陷的儿童面临的风险最大，因此，根据产出确定儿童只会导致对最需要干预的儿童的认识不足。语言理解是产出性语言、识字和一般认知技能发展的核心，但由于在发展早期很难评估理解能力，人们对语言理解的关注有限。两个主要困难限制了对早期理解能力的测量：婴儿注意力分散，以及在实验室外的环境下进行测试的便捷性或简便性。需要一种方法来评估早期的语言理解并预测随后的语言和识字能力。它必须容易地由初级保健提供者管理，并具有跨语言、单语和双语人口的效用。我们建议通过评估计算机化理解任务的长期预测有效性来解决注意力和可移植性的问题。CCT招募婴儿的注意力，以便在生命的第二年直接评估词汇理解。由于这一程序只需10分钟就能完成，而且可以在任何配备触摸屏的电脑上独立运行，因此评估可以作为日常家访或办公室访问的一部分广泛提供。本研究旨在评估CCT在评估不同语言群体(法语、英语、西班牙语单语者和法语-英语和西班牙语-英语双语者)早期理解能力方面的有效性，并预测随着时间的推移的发展结果，包括儿童进入幼儿园时的早期识字和入学准备情况。这种跨语言的纵向研究将产生从理解到生产以及从生产到早期识字的丰富图景。它将推广一项新技术，以满足在发育早期识别有语言和识字困难风险的儿童的迫切需要，并可能有助于及早识别有发展性语言障碍风险的儿童，如特定语言障碍或自闭症谱系障碍。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Understanding the developmental path to early literacy, which is dependent upon earlier developing language comprehension and production and the activities that support it, is a priority in psychological and educational research. This is consistent with a long-standing focus on identifying those children at greatest risk for language delay early in development. These children are also at risk for difficulties in school. Children with deficits in both comprehension and production are at the greatest risk such that identifying children on the basis of production only results in an under-identification of those most in need of intervention. Language comprehension is central to the development of productive language, literacy, and general cognitive skills but has received limited attention due in part to the difficulty of assessing comprehension early in development. Two primary difficulties limit the measurement of early comprehension: infant distractibility and the portability or ease of test administration in settings outside the lab. A methodology is needed to assess early language comprehension and predict subsequent language and literacy. It must be easily administered by primary care providers and have utility across languages and monolingual and bilingual populations. We propose to address the issues of attention and portability by assessing the long-term predictive validity of the Computerized Comprehension Task. The CCT recruits infant attention to permit direct assessments of vocabulary comprehension in the second year of life. Because the procedure takes only 10 minutes to administer and can be self-contained on any computer with a touch sensitive screen, assessment can be made widely available as part of routine home or office visits. The present studies seek to evaluate the efficacy of the CCT to assess early comprehension across language groups (French, English, Spanish monolinguals and French-English and Spanish- English bilinguals) and to predict developmental outcomes over time including early literacy and school-readiness as children approach kindergarten. This cross-linguistic, longitudinal research will yield a rich picture of the transitions from comprehension to production and from production to early literacy. It will extend a new technology to address the pressing need to identify children at risk for language and literacy difficulties early in development and may facilitate the early identification of children at risk for developmental language disorders such as Specific Language Impairment or Autism Spectrum Disorder.