The BDC Lab currently has 3 major ongoing projects: Assessment Tools for Vietnamese, Information Processing, and Project TELL: Test of English Language Learning. Scroll down to read more about these projects!
Assessment Tools for Vietnamese
Developmental language disorder (DLD: 7% prevalence), defined by low language despite otherwise normal development, puts children at greater risk for reading problems and lower vocational attainment (Bishop et al., 2017). Our research lab is pioneering the study of DLD for the Vietnamese language. An overall goal of this project is to create effective tools in Vietnamese that will confirm the presence or absence of DLD at the individual level, whether a child is learning Vietnamese alone or in combination with English. Data collection will be with Vietnamese bilingual children in the United States and Vietnamese monolingual children in Vietnam. Findings will improve assessment accuracy of DLD for Vietnamese speakers worldwide.
Read more about this project here.
Information Processing in Children Learning Different Languages
Cognitive Skills in Children with DLD
In collaboration with Dr. Kerry Ebert at the University of Minnesota, this project aims to investigate memory, attention, and processing speed in children who have developmental language disorder and in children without the disorder. We will determine whether our information processing tasks are valid, reliable tasks that effectively identify children with developmental language disorder regardless of language-learning background (e.g., in both monolingual and bilingual children; in children who speak different languages). It is difficult to accurately identify language disorders in children who speak languages other than English at home because most language assessment tools are based on English. Children with developmental language disorder may share common weaknesses in basic information processing skills (like memory, attention, and processing speed) though, and these weaknesses might help us find a way to identify the disorder that is more universal and less dependent on a child’s past experiences with English.
Read more about this project here.
Project TELL: Test of English Language Learning
In collaboration with Dr. Elizabeth Peña at the University of California Irvine and Dr. Lisa Bedore at Temple University, this five-year project focuses on the development of a test of English morphosyntax that will identify developmental language disorder in bilingual children who speak Spanish or Vietnamese as a first language.
Read more about this project here.