Project description
Understanding developmental language disorders in children
Advances in recent years have improved our ability to address language problems in both children and adults, with roughly 7 % of children known to have significant spoken language problems (developmental language disorder, DLD) and another 7 % having written language problems (developmental dyslexia, DD). Early identification remains difficult, and no theory has yet explained their overlaps. The ERC-funded DISORDERED-SPEECH project will introduce and explore a novel research frontier for developmental language disorders, focusing on speech rhythm and the accurate production of prosodic patterns. It will use novel speech-production tasks alongside the neural theory of child language acquisition to develop tools for the identification of DD and DLD across a variety of European languages.
Objective
Language problems are common in children, with ~7% incidence of significant spoken language problems (Developmental Language Disorder, DLD) and a further ~7% for written language problems (Developmental Dyslexia, DD). While there can be overlap in behavioural indices of DLD and DD (eg prosodic difficulties), no accepted causal theories satisfactorily explain such overlaps, and early identification remains difficult: only half of “late talkers”, toddlers who are not speaking by age 2, go on to develop DLD. Here we combine our innovative neural theory of child language acquisition (temporal sampling [TS] theory) with a novel speech production task to open a new research front in developmental language disorders, based on speech rhythm and the accurate production of prosodic patterns. We test both pre-school children aged 2.5 – 6 years and children with DD and DLD in 4 languages varying in rhythm type, English, French, Spanish and Basque. We apply our in-house state-of-the-art methods for measuring the similarity between the child’s speech amplitude envelope (AE) and pitch contour (PC) of multisyllabic items to oral targets. Prior English data show impaired AE and intact PC for DD, impaired AE and impaired PC for DLD, and consistent links between AE/PC production in typically-developing (TD) children and phonology/vocabulary. We test whether similar patterns characterise TD, DD and DLD across languages. Our focus on the accurate production of the AE/PC is entirely novel, exploits an automatic aspect of linguistic processing, applies to all languages, and may suggest new avenues for remediation. The speech production data acquired from >1000 children will further enable a machine learning approach to early diagnosis based on AE/PC. Our goal is to develop new tools for identifying DD and DLD which can apply across European languages. The frontier vision is that as AEs and PCs describe words in all languages, our approach may reveal new universals in language disorders.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2024-ADG
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CB2 1TN CAMBRIDGE
United Kingdom
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