Our research - Take a look at our posters to see what we've been doing!
September 2018
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How can we use the factors that explain vocabulary
size to identify those children who are late to talk? Why is it that a significant proportion of children who are slow to
begin talking (Late Talkers), go on to develop Developmental Language Disorder, whilst other children who begin as Late Talkers, catch up with their non late-talking peers? To learn more, this study investigated whether the factors that can explain individual differences in vocabulary size can also classify children who are, and are not, slow to talk. To see what we found, click the PDF below to download the poster or preview it on the right. 
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Poster presented by Lana Jago at the 3rd Lancaster Conference on Infant
and Early Child Development, 5th-7th September 2018, Lancaster, UK. | ||
July 2018
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Does how quickly children process words early on
relate to their later language? A number of studies have shown that children who process familiar
words more quickly, have larger vocabularies later on. In this study, as part of the longitudinal Language 0-5 Project, we try to understand why the two (processing speed and word knowledge) are related. Is having a faster processing speed helpful for young children learning new words? Or, could processing speed simply be a measure of how quickly a child is able to access the words that they already know? To see what we found, click the PDF below to download the poster or preview it on the right.
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Poster presented by Michelle Peter at Learning Language in Humans
and in Machines, 5th-6th July 2018, Paris, France. | ||
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Does using baby sign really help to improve children's
language development? In the UK, baby sign is an increasingly popular activity amongst parents and their pre-verbal infants. Companies promoting baby sign make many claims about its benefits, including improving language development, decreasing frustration and enhancing parent-child bonding. These are big claims, but it is unclear that baby sign works, and, if it does, how it works. In this study, as part of the longitudinal Language 0-5 Project, we try to find out whether baby sign enhances mother-child interactions which, in turn, improves language development. To see what we found, click the PDF below to download the poster or preview it on the right. |
Poster presented by Amy Bidgood at the 8th Conference of the
International Society for Gesture Studies, 4th-8th July 2018, Cape Town, South Africa. |
| baby_sign.pdf |
June 2018
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Are the errors that children make with verbs different
for children with Developmental Language Disorder? It is well known that children make errors in their speech as they learn their native language. What is less well understood is why they make some of these errors and why the pattern of these errors is different for different groups of children. In this study, we asked German children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and language-matched controls to take part in a verb- elicitation task that would allow us to compare two different theories about the processes that lead to these different error patterns. To see what we found, click the PDF below to download the poster or preview it on the right. |
Poster presented by Charleen List at the Child Language Symposium, 25th-
26th June 2018, Reading, UK. |
| errors_with_verbs.pdf |
July 2017
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Can we overcome the barriers to shared book reading
for some families? Shared reading interventions have the potential to impact positively on preschool children’s language development and on their caregiver’s attitudes/behaviours towards reading. However, a number of barriers may discourage families from participating or engaging with these interventions, particularly families from lower socioeconomic (SES) backgrounds. We investigated how families from lower SES backgrounds responded to an intervention designed to overcome these barriers by, in particular, emphasising the enjoyment of reading, rather than its educational value. To see what we found, click the PDF below to download the poster or preview it on the right. |
Poster presented by Jamie Lingwood at the 14th International Congress for
the Study of Child Language, 17th-21st July 2017, Lyon, France. |
| shared_reading.pdf |
