The proposed study will examine the relationship between differing levels of lead absorption and long-term speech and language deficits in a cohort of elementary school children. The subject sample will be 250 males aged 10 years. These subject will be recruited from an epidemiological study entitled """"""""Attention deficit, school function and lead esposure"""""""" (Needleman, Loeber, Rosen & Mirsky, In progress), which is currently funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Standards (NIEHS). Bone lead concentrations will be measured and serve as the index of long-term lead storage. The speech and language outcome variables will include measures of speech-motor function, language production processing and language comprehension processsing. Analysis of the data will be accomplished using multivariate regression, with bone lead levels and speech and language function treated as continuous variables. Coariates to be controlled in the analysis include socioeconomic, family, and past medical history factors. Research suggests that the prevalence of lead exposure may be as high as 3-4 million American Children. To date, no studies have examined the relationship between differing levels of lead absorption and long-term speech and language deficits. The subject population and the bone lead measurement device available through the Needleman et al., study provides a unique opportunityu to examine this relationship. The findings from this initial investigation will be important for determining the need for future epidemiological studies that focus on the prevallence of low, moderate and high bone lead levels in populations of children with documented communication deficits.
| Campbell, T F; Needleman, H L; Riess, J A et al. (2000) Bone lead levels and language processing performance. Dev Neuropsychol 18:171-86 |
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| Campbell, T F; Dollaghan, C A (1995) Speaking rate, articulatory speed, and linguistic processing in children and adolescents with severe traumatic brain injury. J Speech Hear Res 38:864-75 |
| Dollaghan, C; Biber, M; Campbell, T (1993) Constituent syllable effects in a nonsense-word repetition task. J Speech Hear Res 36:1051-4 |
