One of the primary advantages in completing the subprojects as a unified program project is the central support provided by the clinical core. The purpose of the clinical core is to recruit and assess appropriate experimental groups within the subprojects. This includes the random assignment of subjects to treatment groups. In addition, the assessment and data analysis activities shared by all projected will be provided by the clinical core. Thus, the clinical core will provide the pre- and post- intervention data collection and language sample collection and analysis to all subprojects. Because these services will be external to the individual sub-project and completed by core staff who will be bland to the purposes of the subprojects, the overall experimental rigor of the program project will be enhanced. This core is directed by the PI and housed in the Bill Wilkerson Center in the Division of Hearing and Speech Sciences at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Because the Bill Wilkerson Center is a primary referral site for speech, language, and hearing services for a substantial geographical area, there is a large catchment base for recruiting subjects to the subprojects. More importantly for the purposes of the program project, there is an ample population of children with language impairments served by the Center that will be available to the program project. The procedures for completing the clinical core activities are presented in this section.
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