Research

The Center’s research focuses on the language-learning skills of children with language disorders. Our goal is to identify a) the strengths and weaknesses that these children bring to language-learning tasks, and b) the treatment conditions under which learning is facilitated.  In our research, children learn new aspects of language in interactive, child-friendly play sessions that encourage their active use of imagination and conversation. During a typical study, children participate in several different learning tasks over a period of several weeks. This permits the children to successfully complete each task just as it permits the research team to document how such successful learning was achieved. Once identified, conditions that facilitate language learning in these experimental learning tasks are tested in the more naturalistic context of the classroom or therapy session.