Is Sequence Learning Key to Language Development? Researchers Will Seek Answer

A University of Texas at Dallas researcher is pursuing answers that could lead to earlier diagnosis and enhanced treatment of developmental language disorder (DLD), which affects approximately 7% of 5-year-old children and has long-term negative academic, social and economic outcomes.

Dr. Lisa Goffman, the Nelle C. Johnston Chair in Communication Disorders in Children in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, received a five-year, $3 million federal grant to pursue a new theory on an underlying mechanism of this impairment in language development.

The Callier Clinical Research Center, a component of the Callier Center for Communication Disorders, will provide the critical infrastructure for the grant (1R01DC018410), awarded to Goffman and her colleague at the University of Arizona, Dr. LouAnn Gerken, by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, a branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).