One of the hallmarks of what it means to be human is language which enables humans to communicate and hence to benefit from the knowledge of others. In modern societies, written language is essential for the preservation and accumulation of knowledge. On the individual level, competence in spoken and written language is fundamental for participating in the educational, economic, social and cultural life of society. Hence, the acquisition of spoken and written language is one of the most important developmental steps in young humans. In typical circumstances, the acquisition of these competencies constitutes no major challenge for the child – provided that the environment offers the necessary conditions, i.e. sufficient language input in critical age ranges for spoken language and sufficient education for written language.
However, even if these conditions are met, not all children acquire these capacities without difficulty. Estimates suggest that about 6 to 8% of children suffer from Specific Language Impairment (SLI), a disorder in language development with no known cause such as general cognitive delay, hearing impairment, brain damage or deprived social circumstances. Based on current birth rates in the EU27, around 1.75 Mio pre-school children in Europe suffer from this disorder and are at risk of facing serious problems on entering school. Furthermore, 3 to 10% of children suffer from Developmental Dyslexia (DD), a specific disorder in acquiring fluent reading and writing skills, again without any known causes resulting from more general cognitive, perceptual or social conditions. This disorder is persistent across the lifespan, with slow reading and spelling problems still handicapping the use of written language in adulthood3 thereby leading to an enhanced risk for marginalization and drop-out from society.
Despite a high comorbidity, SLI and DD have so far been studied mostly independently. In that perspective, the project combines previously established early indicators in both domains to create an integrated approach to language-related developmental risk.
In sum, Predictable aims at identifying the specific ways in which children with disorders do and do not deviate from typically developing children, which is fundamental for the detection
of early markers and the development of more targeted interventions. This enterprise can only be realized by a network of partners from the academic and the private sector that provides expertise in developmental psycholinguistics, neuroscience, speech science, in the technologies related to these fields and in clinical applications.
