NEUROBEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT--NORMAL, LI & DEAF CHILDREN

描述（由申请人提供）：我们的主要目标是表征语言处理和相关注意力和感觉技能中重要的神经系统和子系统的身份，发育时间过程和相对可塑性（可修改性/脆弱性）。在2-8岁的儿童中，我们将获得事件相关脑电位（ERP），在6- 8岁的儿童中，我们还将获得大脑的结构和功能磁共振图像（MRI），以精确表征受试者执行旨在激活感官和语言功能特定方面的任务时神经激活的时间和位置。在正常发育的儿童中，我们将根据我们以前的研究来检验这一假设，即具有较长发育时间过程的系统更脆弱，并且在有限的（和可变的）时间段内是可修改的，而早期发育的系统不那么脆弱，并且保留了在整个生命中改变的能力。在年龄较小和年龄较大的正常儿童中，我们将通过研究儿童的语言经验来评估这些系统的相对可变性：（1）在一个学年的开始和结束时，在教室里，教师的言语表现出较高或较低的句法复杂性和词汇多样性;（2）在旨在促进语言发展的干预计划的10周之前和之后。我们将测试的假设，增加语言输入导致增加语义和注意力技能和相关的神经系统在两个年龄组，但只会影响语法和形态系统的发展在较年轻的年龄组。此外，我们将描述这些相同的系统在年轻和年长的语言障碍（LI）的儿童，以评估不同的假设赤字，导致LI，以及相关的假设，是否和如何快速ForWord（FFW），语法促进（GF）和叙事为基础的（NBLI）干预影响语言在LI儿童。我们将评估这一假设，即FFW提高了所有儿童的快速听觉处理和听觉注意力技能，GF和NBLI影响语法处理和相关的神经系统，但只在年幼的儿童。由于拟议中的研究将提供证据，说明哪些感知和语言系统最受环境输入的影响，以及它们最易改变的时间段，因此这些研究将为教育和教学计划的开发、改进和评估提供具有实际意义的信息。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Our broad goals are to characterize the identity, developmental time courses and relative plasticity (modifiability/vulnerability) of neural systems and subsystems important in language processing and related attentional and sensory skills. In children 2-8 years of age we will acquire event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and, in 6- to 8-year-olds, we will also acquire structural and functional magnetic resonance images (MRI) of the brain to precisely characterize both the timing and the location of neural activations as subjects perform tasks designed to activate specific aspects of sensory and language functions. In normally developing children we will test the hypothesis, based on our previous research, that systems that have longer developmental time courses are more vulnerable and are modifiable during limited (and variable) time periods, whereas systems that develop early are less vulnerable and retain the ability to change throughout life. In younger and older groups of normal children, we will assess the relative modifiability of these systems by language experience by studying children (1) at the beginning and at the end of a school year in classrooms where teachers' speech displays either higher or lower syntactic complexity and lexical diversity and (2) before and after 10 weeks of an intervention program designed to facilitate language growth. We will test the hypothesis that increased language input leads to increases in semantic and attentional skills and related neural systems in both age groups, but will affect the development of grammatical and morphological systems only in the younger age group. In addition, we will characterize these same systems in younger and older language impaired (LI) children to assess different hypotheses about the deficits that give rise to LI, and related hypotheses concerning whether or not and how Fast ForWord (FFW), Grammatical Facilitation (GF) and Narrative-Based (NBLI) interventions impact language in LI children. We will assess the hypothesis that FFW improves rapid auditory processing and auditory attentional skills in all children and that GF and NBLI affect grammatical processing and related neural systems but only in younger children. Since the proposed research will provide evidence about which perceptual and language systems are most altered by environmental input, and the time periods when they are most modifiable, these studies wilt contribute information of practical significance for the development, refinement and evaluation of educational and habilitative programs.