Background

Individual Differences in Language Development (IDLD) Project

Humans have a remarkable ability to detect patterns and regularities. Across domains as diverse as music, vision, and language, even young infants are skillful pattern detectors, able to learn without explicit instruction that certain features, events, and concepts in their environment occur together. This powerful process, called statistical learning, enables us to make sense of the complexities of our world. One central goal of the IDLD Project is to examine the role of statistical learning in children’s language development.

The IDLD Project follows 100+ typically-developing children through the first two years of primary school, measuring children’s performance on several cognitive measures that are related to language and literacy development, including statistical learning, working memory, receptive vocabulary, and non-verbal ability. We will then determine how well these measures predict children’s spoken language and literacy development across the following 18 months (measuring growth every 6 months).

The IDLD Project is being conducted within several primary schools in Canberra. We are very grateful for their assistance and support.

Funding: Australian Research Council (ARC)