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Screen Time and Parent-Child Talk When Children Are Aged 12 to 36 MonthsGrowing up in a language-rich home environment is important for children's language development in the early years. The concept of "technoference" (technology-based interference) suggests that screen time may be interfering with opportunities for talk and interactions between parent and child; however, limited longitudinal evidence exists exploring this association.
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Arcuate fasciculus and pre-reading language development in children with prenatal alcohol exposurePrenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) contributes to widespread neurodevelopmental challenges, including reading, and has been associated with altered white matter. Here, we aimed to investigate whether arcuate fasciculus development is associated with pre-reading language skills in young children with PAE.
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Caregiver sensitivity predicts infant language use, and infant language complexity predicts caregiver language complexity, in the context of possible emerging autismWhile theory supports bidirectional effects between caregiver sensitivity and language use, and infant language acquisition-both caregiver-to-infant and also infant-to-caregiver effects-empirical research has chiefly explored the former unidirectional path. In the context of infants showing early signs of autism, we investigated prospective bidirectional associations with 6-min free-play interaction samples collected for 103 caregivers and their infants (mean age 12-months; and followed up 6-months later).
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Does cerebral lateralization develop? A study using functional transcranial Doppler ultrasound assessingIn the majority of people, language production is lateralized to the left cerebral hemisphere and visuospatial skills to the right.
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Robustness, risk and responsivity in early language acquisitionLanguage is a robust developmental phenomenon, characterised by rapid and prodigious growth.
News & Events
ORIGINS reaches key milestoneORIGINS, a collaboration between The Kids and the Joondalup Health Campus, has achieved a major milestone – recruiting its 1000th family.
Research
Maternal Serum Vitamin D Levels During Pregnancy and Offspring Neurocognitive DevelopmentNew research links poor language to lack of Vitamin D in womb.
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The Utility of Natural Language Samples for Assessing Communication and Language in Infants Referred with Early Signs of AutismNatural Language Sampling (NLS) offers clear potential for communication and language assessment, where other data might be difficult to interpret. We leveraged existing primary data for 18-month-olds showing early signs of autism, to examine the reliability and concurrent construct validity of NLS-derived measures coded from video-of child language, parent linguistic input, and dyadic balance of communicative interaction-against standardised assessment scores. Using Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT) software and coding conventions, masked coders achieved good-to-excellent inter-rater agreement across all measures.
News & Events
The Kids Research Institute Australia researchers share in State Government science grantsFour The Kids Research Institute Australia researchers are among those who have received funding in the WA State Government's Merit Award Program announced today.
News & Events
Twins talk half as much at twoA world first study of language development in toddler twins confirms the widely held belief that twins start to talk later than single-born children.