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The majority of children acquire language effortlessly but approximately 10% of all children find it difficult especially in the early or preschool years with consequences for many aspects of their subsequent development and experience: literacy, social skills, educational qualifications, mental health and employment.

The aim of this research note is to encourage child language researchers and clinicians to give careful consideration to the use of domain-specific tests as a proxy for language; particularly in the context of large-scale studies and for the identification of language disorder in clinical practice.

Natural Language Sampling (NLS) offers clear potential for communication and language assessment, where other data might be difficult to interpret. We leveraged existing primary data for 18-month-olds showing early signs of autism, to examine the reliability and concurrent construct validity of NLS-derived measures coded from video-of child language, parent linguistic input, and dyadic balance of communicative interaction-against standardised assessment scores. Using Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT) software and coding conventions, masked coders achieved good-to-excellent inter-rater agreement across all measures.

The Life Course Centre is a national centre funded by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence Scheme and hosted through the University of Queensland with collaborating nodes at the University of Western Australia, Sydney University and University of Melbourne.

Modern societies are challenged by "wicked problems" - by definition, those that are difficult to define, multi-casual and hard to treat.

Language development is one of the most important developmental accomplishments of early childhood and is the foundation for literacy, educational...

There is controversy over whether increased breast-feeding duration has long-term benefits for language development.

Evidence that some children also develop autistic symptomatology over time has raised suggestions that developmental language disorder...

Differentiating between childhood communication disorders: Implications for language and psychosocial outcomes

A link between developmental language disorders and atypical cerebral lateralization has been postulated since the 1920s, but evidence has been indirect and...