Understanding the linguistic, cognitive, and socio-cognitive predictors of differing trajectories in child language development:

Analyses of the Early Language in Victoria Study.
Approximately 7.5% of children have difficulties with language development with lifelong consequences and have Developmental Language Disorder. Early identification and provision of effective intervention could help to reduce the impact of these difficulties. However, volatility in young children's language makes it hard to predict which children with early language difficulties have persisting difficulties and which will resolve.
Epidemiological studies have identified multiple predictors of language trajectories and outcomes, but these explain little of the variance. Small-scale studies have identified that early individual differences in linguistic symptomatology, cognitive, and/or socio-cognitive factors may predict language trajectories. However, due to limited follow-up, sample size, and restricted measures, the study findings remain equivocal.
To rigorously examine early individual differences in linguistic symptomatology, cognitive, and socio-cognitive factors and predict language trajectories requires detailed empirical data, the Early Language in Victoria Study (ELVS), a longitudinal community cohort (N=1,910) focusing on language, uniquely provides this.
Using the ELVS data, I will conduct descriptive, regression, and latent class analyses to identify: (1) language trajectories and the proportion of children with persisting, resolving, and late-emerging difficulties; (2) to what degree linguistic, cognitive, and socio-cognitive factors predict trajectories; (3) how differing trajectories predict later educational and literacy outcomes; (4) whether categorising clusters/subgroups in early linguistic, cognitive, and socio-cognitive symptomatology is possible and how do these predict later language, educational, and literacy outcomes?
In answering these questions, I aim to deliver findings relevant to early identification, and therefore policy and practice, and inform theories of the ontogeny of language disorders.