We’ve been struggling with her, with her vocabulary and being able to say certain words
right or using words properly and it’s been a constant issue with her since she was in
preschool and it’s been a constant struggle and frustration for me because I don’t know
how to help her.
Anything that I can do that would help her and get more information to her teachers,
that’s what I was in for.
Our study is called the Children’s Vocabulary Project and it’s a longitudinal study.
We’re following children from the first grade to the fourth grade and we’re trying
to understand how their ability to learn words changes over that time.
Some of the children have developmental language disorders and some are typically developing.
We’re interested in both types of learners and all types of learners and we’re very
interested in how learning changes over the first four years of school because those are
really critical years.
You get a lot of instruction on vocabulary at school and of course you get instruction
on learning to read at school which can further your vocabulary development.
It could be that children with developmental language disorders learn differently, not
just less, but differently than other children and this longitudinal project could help us
to determine if that’s the case and ultimately to find some ways to help them learn better.
We recognize that it’s a commitment for families to enroll in a longitudinal study.
We'll be visiting their child every year for four years and so we really want to make that
experience convenient for them and fun for the child, so we have essentially an office
in our van that enables us to travel to the family’s homes and see the children there.
The parents sit in the front seat.
The child sits in the back with the examiner and they do the activities, games and tests
that we prepared for the day.
We teach them words in a couple of different ways and for them it seems like a game so
they are either answering a question about a picture or simply observing a picture and
trying to remember the name of the item.
We spend about an hour at a time with each child and that hour they do the word learning
tasks but mixed in with that are different puzzles for testing their memory and attention.
We do share informally the results every year of how their child is progressing in all those
different areas.
It’s always fun when the van pulls up.
Ace gets really excited and he’s always excited to see the group.
I think what I’ve learned from the project is I think, the nuances of vocabulary.
As we get these reports I see where he has strengths and where he could improve and then
we can take that and we usually go to whatever resources the group gives us and look it up
and work with them to try and prove where he needs improvement.
Also to help any families out there that are struggling, maybe the test results would be
able to help another family, another kid be able to get diagnosed a lot faster.
I think it’s good for the families to understand language and how children learn and I also
think it’s just good for the research community.
It’s going to help the researchers develop programs or learning materials to help kids
improve their language.
Research on developmental language disorders is a new avenue at Boys Town National Research
Hospital but it really fits our mission perfectly.
We aim to change the way America cares for children, families, and communities and we
find that these children who have developmental language disorders really do need more support
than they are getting as a population.
They tend to be under identified and their family members worry a lot about their ability
to communicate and their ability to learn so the research that we’re conducting on
DLD at Boys Town National Research Hospital can really make a difference.