SES-Related disparities in early language development and child risk for developmental language disorder (Phase 2)

NIH RePORTER · NIH · R01 · $2,299,426 · view on reporter.nih.gov ↗

Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT The goal of this study is to identify the pathways through which poverty conditions and the early family context contribute to persistent language disorder at age 9 years among young, low-income children. This renewal seeks to continue to follow a sample of 311 children ascertained in the first year of life and followed to age 4 years to determine pathways through which the early family context increase susceptibility to developmental language disorder at school entry. The study is designed to address disparities in the rate of DLD among young children, with low-income children disproportionately affected (Norbury et al., 2017). The proposed longitudinal study addresses three specific aims regarding low-income dyads: (1) to model the language trajectories from ~2 to ~9 years and reading trajectories from ~5 to ~9 years for children from low-income homes as a function of DLD status at school entry; (2) to test the Family Stress Model's applicability for specifying the pathways through which the early home context is associated with persistent language disorder at age 9; and (3) to test the Differential Susceptibility Theory for representing how early environmental adversities can contribute to risk for persistent language disorder among young children with DLD. We theorize that low-income children with DLD have heightened risk for persistent language disorder when they experience significant adversities imposed by poverty, in particular parent psychological distress and disrupted parenting. In our longitudinal research design, 12 assessment sessions conducted in four windows over a 5-year period are used to comprehensively measure children's language and reading skills from 5 to 9 years. We couple these data with robust measurement of children's early family context across five dimensions (economic hardship, economic pressure, caregiver psychological distress, interrelationship conflict, disrupted parenting) and children's linguistic trajectories until 54 months. The study aims are addressed using multi-level growth models (including nonparametric modeling) and multilevel path analyses to examine the interplay among children's language and reading trajectories, DLD status at 54 months and persistent language disorder to age 9, and the early family context.

Key facts

NIH application ID
10981676
Project number
2R01DC018009-06
Recipient
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
Principal Investigator
Laura M. Justice
Activity code
R01
Funding institute
NIH
Fiscal year
2024
Award amount
$2,299,426
Award type
2
Project period
2020-07-01 → 2027-08-31