Environmental & Biological Variation and Language Growth

描述（由申请人提供）：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特的能力，是人与人之间信息交换的基础。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。本计划以这个问题为重点，探讨语言学习过程的范围和限制。为了研究面对环境变化时语言的发展（项目一），选择了60名儿童，代表芝加哥地区的人口统计范围，观察年龄在14岁到58岁之间的儿童。当他们进入学校学习阅读时，他们会继续学习。将对5至10岁儿童的自发语言、叙事和阅读技能进行评估。利用这些数据，我们将为每个孩子构建成长曲线，以跟踪他们在不同时期的语言和阅读发展，并检查儿童在后期（5-10岁）的语言和阅读进步与他们在早期（14-58岁）的发展轨迹之间的关系。为探讨生物变异下的语言发育（项目III），对40例14 ~ 58岁的单侧脑损伤儿童进行了观察。将对他们进行5到10年的跟踪研究，目的是确定环境变化在预测他们的语言和阅读能力增长方面是否起到了与未遭受脑损伤的儿童相同的作用。除了传统的测量方法外，还将使用另外两个探头。(1)将对来自项目1 - 3的儿童的手势进行检查，以确定相对于同龄人的语言延迟儿童是否使用手势来弥补这些延迟（项目2）。(2)将使用功能磁共振成像技术评估来自项目1 - 3的儿童的语言和手势能力的大脑基础（项目4）。

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.