Developmental language impairments are long term handicaps that frequently underlie learning disabilities and dyslexia. The long term goal of this grant is to increase understanding of the biological foundations of these impairments. Studies in the first two years are designed to explore the agents and events hypothesized to contribute to the expression of a language impairment in children.
This aim will be addressed with two studies that involve measurement of brain MRI scans of subjects whose verbal and nonverbal skills have been documented through standardized testing. The first study evaluates the potential role of androgens by examining brain asymmetries and behavioral skills in females with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, compared with their normal siblings and normal controls. The second study evaluates the issue of heritability by examining the familial aggregation of atypical brain asymmetries and poor language skills in families that include a specifically language impaired proband. Studies in subsequent years retain brain anatomy as an anchor and explore relations between atypical brain anatomy, specific behavioral skills, and brain physiology in specific language impairment. These studies will integrate the training component with the long term goal of the research component of the C.I.D.A. proposal.
| Swisher, L; Restrepo, M A; Plante, E et al. (1995) Effect of implicit and explicit ""rule"" presentation on bound-morpheme generalization in specific language impairment. J Speech Hear Res 38:168-73 |
| Bellaire, S; Plante, E; Swisher, L (1994) Bound-morpheme skills in the oral language of school-age, language-impaired children. J Commun Disord 27:265-79 |
| Swisher, L; Plante, E (1993) Nonverbal IQ tests reflect different relations among skills for specifically language-impaired and normal children: brief report. J Commun Disord 26:65-71 |
| Plante, E; Swisher, L; Kiernan, B et al. (1993) Language matches: illuminating or confounding? Research note. J Speech Hear Res 36:772-6 |
