Environmental & Biological Variation and Language Growth

描述(申请人提供)：获得使用自然语言和象征性手势进行交流的能力是人类独有的能力，是人与人之间信息交流的基础。关于这一过程对环境和生物变化的影响有多大，目前还没有达成共识。拟议的方案项目聚焦于这一问题，探索语言学习过程的范围和限制。为了考察语言在面对环境变化时的增长(项目I)，60名儿童被选为芝加哥地区人口统计范围的代表，年龄在14岁到58岁之间。并将在他们进入学校和学习阅读的过程中继续受到关注。本课程将评估5至10岁儿童的自然语言能力，以及叙事和阅读技能。利用这些数据，将为每个儿童绘制生长曲线，以跟踪语言和阅读随时间的发展，并检查儿童在以后几年(5-10岁)的语言和阅读进展。与早年(14-58个月)的发育轨迹有关。为探讨生物变异对儿童语言发育的影响(方案III)，对40例单侧脑损伤儿童14~58个月的语言发育进行了观察。将在5到10年内进行跟踪调查，以确定环境变化在预测他们的语言和阅读发育方面是否与没有遭受大脑损伤的儿童一样发挥作用。除了传统的措施外，还将使用另外两个探头。(1)将对L项目的儿童进行手势测试，以确定与同龄人相比言语迟缓的儿童是否使用手势来弥补这些迟缓(项目II)。(2)L项目将使用功能磁共振成像技术评估儿童语言和手势能力的大脑基础(项目IV)。 三个核心将为这些项目提供广泛的支持：行政核心A、数据收集和转录核心B和统计核心C。拟议的工作建立在五年不同样本的纵向数据的基础上，因此提供了一个独特的机会，探讨早期语言学习对儿童在上学后发展的口语和书面技能的影响。这些数据有可能揭示导致高社会经济群体和低社会经济群体儿童在开学第一天的差距的因素，甚至可能指出缩小差距的方法。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Acquiring the ability to communicate using natural language and symbolic gestures is a uniquely human capacity that underlies the exchange of information among people. There is as yet no consensus concerning how susceptible this process is to environmental and biological variation. The proposed Program Project focuses on this issue, exploring the extent and the limits of the language-learning process. To examine language growth in the face of environmental variation (Project I), 60 children, selected to represent the demographic range of the Chicago area, were observed between the ages of 14 and 58 mos. and will continue to be followed as they enter school and learn to read. Assessments will be made of child spontaneous speech, along with narrative and reading skills from 5 to 10 years. Using these data, growth curves will be constructed for each child to track language and reading development across time, and to examine children's linguistic and reading progress in the later years (5-10 yrs.) in relation to their developmental trajectory during the early years (14-58 mos.). To explore language growth in the face of biological variation (Project III), 40 children with unilateral brain injury who were observed from 14 to 58 mos. will be followed from 5 to 10 years with an eye toward determining whether environmental variation plays the same role in predicting their language and reading growth as it does in children who have not suffered brain injury. Along with traditional measures, two additional probes will be used. (1) Gesture will be examined in children from Projects l-lll to determine whether children who are delayed in speech relative to their peers use gesture to compensate for those delays (Project II). (2) The brain bases underlying linguistic and gestural competence will be assessed in children from Projects l-lll using fMRI techniques (Project IV). Three cores will provide broad support to the projects: the Administrative Core A, the Data Collection and Transcription Core B, and the Statistical Core C. The proposed work builds on five years of longitudinal data in a diverse sample, and thus offers a unique opportunity to explore the impact that early language learning has on the oral and written skills that children develop once schooling has begun. The data have the potential to shed light on the factors that contribute to the gap between children from high vs. low socioeconomic groups on the first day of school, and may even point to ways of shrinking that gap.