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, administrative support for maintaining and updating the database, support for web site development, program design and printing, 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 25 years. The Symposium is the only national conference devoted solely to language disorders research. Over the past 25 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. Past programs have been uniformly of high quality, featuring 5 to 7 invited plenary presentations by prominent researchers and have included increasing numbers of research papers making important contributions to the field. Progress since the last grant began in 2000 include 1) an expanded program with 96 posters and six invited state-of the art sessions at the 2004 meeting, up from 59 in 1999; 2) the addition of the Elizabeth Bates Memorial Lecture to the 2004 program 3) NIH student Travel funds for 2004 supported 22 student presenters, 9 from underrepresented minorities; 4) a more advanced web site featuring online submission and registration 5) increased international participation by researchers studying children learning a variety of languages.
