This request is for five years of continuing support for the Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders (SRCLD) held annually at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Funds will provide travel and per diem support for invited speakers, travel support for students presenting papers or posters and administrative support for maintaining and updating the mailing list and communications with participants, web site maintenance, computer support, and supplies. The excellence of the SRCLD has been documented in several areas including uniqueness, quality of past programs, attendees, student participation, program growth, and the products resulting from the meetings over the past 20 years. The Symposium is the only national conference devoted solely to language disorders research. Over the past 20 years this meeting has achieved the distinction among child language researchers as a high quality scientific meeting fostering research development among professional researchers and doctoral students in training. Programs have been uniformly of high quality, featuring five to six invited major presentations by prominent researchers and contributed research papers making important contributions to the field. Progress since the last grant began in 1995 include: 1). Expansion of the program to two and one-half days accommodating 59 contributed papers and posters and six invited state-of the art presentations for 1999; 2). Tutorial and discussion sessions for students at the end of each day; 3). NIH student Travel funds for 1999 will support at least in part the travel for 35 students, 15 from underrepresented minorities; 4). Increased international participation by researchers studying children learning a variety of languages.
