Child Language & Culture Lab

Overview 

The Child Language & Culture Lab examines language development and disorders among children who are culturally/linguistically diverse. Research emphases include (a) examining the relationship between the linguistic environment and children’s language skills across languages; (b) developing and testing diagnostic measures to improve the identification of developmental language disorder among children who are culturally/linguistically diverse; and (c) developing and testing technologies that support language assessment and intervention for children who are culturally/linguistically diverse.

Facilities

The lab is equipped with measures to collect behavioral data. Testing and intervention activities are conducted in rooms that are child friendly on the Gallaudet University campus or at children’s schools.

People

The Child Language & Culture Lab is directed by Dr. Nahar Albudoor, Ph.D., CCC-SLP and works in collaboration with on-campus and off-campus personnel, including faculty, students, technicians, and researchers.

Current projects

• Establishing the feasibility of automatic speech recognition for bilingual child language assessment.
• Modeling the relationship between bilingual children’s language input across sources (e.g., parents, peers, teachers) and their language output.
• Identifying the diagnostic indicators of developmental language disorder among middle schoolers exposed to a language other than English in the home.