色情视频

Ever wonder how much a baby really understands before they start speaking themselves? And if a toddler鈥檚 ability to understand language can foretell their success in the classroom later?

These are the questions being asked by 色情视频 researchers as part of a new $2.2 million research project from the National Institutes of Health.  

Professor Margaret Friend, a developmental psychologist in 色情视频鈥檚 and director of the , is leading the five-year international multi-site grant that will examine whether early language comprehension leads to literacy and school-readiness.   

鈥淩esearch into this area typically focuses on what children say as a measure of their language acquisition, but our research focuses on comprehension which allows us to tap into words and concepts that children know even before they can say them,鈥� said Friend, who is collaborating with researchers at UCSD, Concordia University in Montreal, Canada and the University of Geneva in Switzerland.

Comprehension leads to school readiness

Friend said preliminary research has indicated that babies who performed well on comprehension tasks in their second year of life (16-20 months) did better on language tasks (for example, spontaneous language use, the number of different words that they knew, and their ability to tell a story) in their fourth year of life.

鈥淲e want to see if the relationship between early comprehension and school readiness holds across languages.鈥�

To measure language comprehension, babies participating in the study will hear words and will be asked to touch images on a touch-screen monitor that match the words. For example, researchers will show the baby a ball and a bottle and ask her to touch one of the images (鈥淲here鈥檚 the ball? Touch ball!鈥�).  

Electronic grocery store self check-outs, iPads, and smart phones all make use of some form of touch technology.  The touch-screen used in this task differs slightly from these applications, providing exactly the technology needed for the research.

鈥淭he touch-screen technology is a novel approach to testing comprehension,鈥� Friend said. 鈥淭he pictures are really dynamic, the devices make fun sounds reinforcing the task and it keeps the babies interested longer so we can get a better measure of their comprehension.鈥�

The longitudinal study will follow 250 16- to 20-month-olds for five years and compare their comprehension to their performance in the fourth year of life in order to see if early comprehension predicts school-readiness.  

The research in the language acquisition of babies is one of many ways 色情视频 faculty are leading , a key initiative of . With a unique focus on the teacher-scholar model, 色情视频 attracts researchers interested in solving the world鈥檚 most pressing problems, while showing students how to provide future solutions. .

Bilingual children

Not only will researchers look at children from English-only speaking homes, but will also assess children in both Spanish and French monolingual homes, as well as Spanish-English and French-English bilingual homes.

鈥淣o other long-term study of the relation between early comprehension and school-readiness has looked at children from bilingual homes,鈥� said Friend. 鈥淲e want to see if the relationship between early comprehension and school readiness holds across languages.鈥�

Ultimately, researchers hope their findings will help identify language delays earlier in childhood in order to intervene before they cause problems in the classroom.

鈥淐hildren with language delays are often frustrated students because they don鈥檛 have the same skills to express themselves,鈥� Friend said. 鈥淏ecause of this, these students are often at risk for not just academic but social and emotional problems in the classroom.  And it can affect them even further down the road when they are in the workplace.鈥�

If you are interested in participating in the study contact Anya Mancillas at 619-594-0498 or fill out the .