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Are late talking children learning differently? Using a longitudinal approach to examine word learning and language delay

Wednesday 23 February 2022, 1.00PM to 2.00pm

Speaker(s): Dr Rachael Cheung, Born in Bradford (Better Start Bradford Innovation Hub) / Psychology in Education Research Centre

Late talking children say approximately less than 90% of their peers at the age of two. Predicting the outcomes of late talkers is notoriously difficult due to the sheer amount of heterogeneity within the population. In order to improve our predictions, we need to know if late talkers learn words and use other symbol systems differently to typically developing children. We also need to use methods that allow for individual variation and consider how we conceptualise late talking as part of general language delay. This talk covers a longitudinal research project designed to address these issues with a cohort of late talking and typically developing children, who were followed up between 2 – 4 years-old and tested on a variety of language tasks. This talk also considers how the populations we traditionally study in late talker research might affect the conclusions we draw, and how a multiple hit hypothesis might best characterise language delay.

Location: via Zoom