Professor Carmela Miniscalco awarded ALF funding for her research on developmental language disorder
GNC researcher receives funding for important research on developmental language disorder.
The GNC is delighted to announce that Professor Carmela Miniscalco has been awarded 400,000 SEK per year for three years for her research on stability and change in children with developmental language and communication disorders from toddlerhood into adulthood.
Developmental language disorder (DLD) occurs in 5 to 8% of all mono- or multilingual preschool children (Calder et al., 2022; Norbury et al., 2016). In addition, 2 to 3% have communication and language disorders associated with intellectual disability, autism or other developmental disabilities (Norbury et al., 2016). The current research plan for 2025-27 aims to address key aspects of DLD and related communication challenges across different age groups and conditions, while also exploring environmental influences on child development.
In the main project, we want to explore outcomes in young adulthood of children who had and had not screened positive for language delay at the routine Child Health Services (CHS) check-up at 2.5 years regarding e.g. 1) results at the 4-year routine developmental check-up at CHS, 2) academic eligibility to upper secondary school, 3) registered psychiatric diagnoses 4) psychiatric medication, 5) unemployment, and 6) financial support by use of register-based data. Through follow-up clinical assessments, we also want to focus broadly on this unique group of individuals’ language skills, cognitive skills, social skills, and quality of life.
The project is mainly a descriptive explorative study of the longitudinal individual outcome of children identified with DLD at age 2.5 years, using both quantitative and qualitative measures. In the qualitative interviews, we want to address the impact of growing up with DLD in Sweden.
