Morphosyntactic Abilities of SLI Probands

Language acquisition of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) can fall below age expectations throughout childhood and into adulthood for unknown reasons. This study draws on three areas of scholarship to evaluate possible effects of genetics and environment: Linguistics, genetics, and children with SLI. The study documents long-term longitudinal outcomes of language, speech and reading abilities relative to age peers, carries out family-based genetic investigations, and documents long-term social outcomes. The overall objective is to identify associations of language impairments with genetic variations in families with or without children with SLI. The outcomes will have implications for speech and language intervention methods and pediatric practice.