Small Talk: Administrative Supplement for Tackling Acquisition of Language in Kids (TALK) Initiative

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PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Administrative Supplement for Tackling Acquisition of Language in Kids (TALK) Initiative The goal of this study is to identify prevalence and characteristics of late language emergence (LLE) among young children (~24 to 27 months of age) reared in low-income homes, and to determine how the conditions of poverty contribute to LLE status among these vulnerable children. The study uses data collected across the first five time-points of a parent grant that is designed to address disparities in the rate of developmental language disorder (DLD) among young children, with low-income children disproportionately affected (Norbury et al., 2017). The long-term objective is to identify pathways through which early family contexts and the conditions of poverty disrupt early language trajectories among low-income children and contribute to heightened rates of LLE (the focus of the TALK supplement) and DLD. The proposed longitudinal study addresses three specific aims specific to an existing longitudinal sample of 220 low-SES 2-year-old children: (1) to identify the prevalence of LLE and the theorized domains in the Family Stress Model that differentiate children with LLE from those without LLE; (2) to examine early language trajectories from ~6 months to ~27 months for those with LLE and those without LLE; and (3) to identify the pathways through which the ecology of poverty disrupts early language trajectories and contributes to LLE. Specifically, we will evaluate the Family Stress Model to identify the relations among five domains representing salient conditions of poverty (economic hardship, economic pressure, parent psychological distress, interpersonal relationship problems, and disrupted parenting) and their mediating and moderating roles in disrupting children's early language trajectories and leading to LLE status. In the parent study, measurements were collected twice annually to comprehensively map family processes and experiences, caregiver-child interaction quality, caregiver stress and stress physiology, child stress physiology, and children's linguistic trajectories. With this supplement, we are able to embed a focus on LLE and the influence of poverty conditions on young children's susceptibility for LLE, a group for whom LLE exceeds normative prevalence estimates in unselected population-based studies.