Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

My primary research interest is in the area of Developmental Language Delay (DLD) which refers to atypical development of speech and language in the absence of another disorder that may explain it. DLD is thought to affect approximately 7% of all children (Norbury et al., 2016 ; Tomblin et al., 1997 ). This tends to affect writing, literacy, academic performance. In turn, the ability to find meaningful employment and often results in a reliance on social support. What is known about DLD is that early intervention is crucial to identify those with DLD before entering school. It is known that language delays that persist past the age of 5 are unlikely to resolve (Stothard et al., 2019) . This allows them to be more prepared for the demands of school, and to provide children and their support network the tools they need to ensure success. However, there is a current gap in the knowledge on how to effectively identify preschool children at risk for DLD. As it stands, there is a lack of effective screening tools to identify which children are at risk. Exploring factors that lead to a DLD diagnosis for preschoolers is the goal of my research. It will look at the preliminary research done on bio-medical and socio-demographic risk factors that are known to be present in children with DLD and to determine the nature of the correlation between developing language and the presence of these risk factors. Essentially, I will be determining the correlation between known risk factors for DLD and performance on tasks measuring language in anglophone and bilingual French-English preschool children living in northeastern Ontario.