Early Brain Activity Markers for Language Problems in Infants A Long-Term Study of Children at Risk for Language and Learning Disabilities

What this Trial Is About

This research aims to identify very early brain activity markers that may indicate risk for language impairments in children. It focuses on tracking developmental learning patterns in infants who have a family history of language difficulties. The study follows children from infancy through school age to understand how early neurophysiological processes relate to later reading and spelling abilities. Participants undergo electrophysiological recordings at 6, 12, and 24 months to capture early neural markers. Later, individual behavioral assessments are conducted at ages 3, 4.5, 6, and 8 years to evaluate language-related skills and development. The study includes infants from the Medea BabyLab cohort, with groups based on familial risk for language impairments. During the study, children are assessed on various language and cognitive skills including vocabulary, phonological awareness, memory, syntactic and lexical comprehension, letter knowledge, reading, and spelling at specific ages. Researchers also measure secondary outcomes like naming accuracy and visual-motor integration. The study monitors these developmental trajectories over several years to build a prognostic model predicting language outcomes based on early brain activity.

Early Neurophysiological Markers of Language Impairments