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The Life Course Centre is a national centre funded by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence Scheme and hosted through the University of Queensland with collaborating nodes at the University of Western Australia, Sydney University and University of Melbourne.

Language development is critical for children's life chances. Promoting parent-child interactions is suggested as one mechanism to support language development in the early years. However, limited evidence exists for a causal effect of parent-child interactions on children's language development.

The aim of this research note is to encourage child language researchers and clinicians to give careful consideration to the use of domain-specific tests as a proxy for language; particularly in the context of large-scale studies and for the identification of language disorder in clinical practice.

A child's ability to communicate is one of their most important developmental achievements. It builds a foundation for everything that is to come.

Language is one of the most remarkable developmental accomplishments of early childhood. Language connects us with others and is an essential tool for literacy, education, employment and lifelong learning.

Research from large population-based studies investigating the language and academic outcomes for bilingual children is rare. The current study aimed to investigate the influence of dual language exposure on (i) English vocabulary outcomes at 5 years (126 bilinguals, 1675 monolinguals), and 10 years (vocabulary: 92 bilinguals, 1413 monolinguals:), and (ii) academic outcomes at 10 years (107 bilinguals, 1746 monolinguals).

This study sought to determine the prevalence of Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) in Australian school-aged children and associated potential risk factors for DLD at 10 years.

The majority of children acquire language effortlessly but approximately 10% of all children find it difficult especially in the early or preschool years with consequences for many aspects of their subsequent development and experience: literacy, social skills, educational qualifications, mental health and employment.

Natural Language Sampling (NLS) offers clear potential for communication and language assessment, where other data might be difficult to interpret. We leveraged existing primary data for 18-month-olds showing early signs of autism, to examine the reliability and concurrent construct validity of NLS-derived measures coded from video-of child language, parent linguistic input, and dyadic balance of communicative interaction-against standardised assessment scores. Using Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT) software and coding conventions, masked coders achieved good-to-excellent inter-rater agreement across all measures.

Fiona Pete Stanley Azzopardi FAA FASSA MSc MD FFPHM FAFPHM FRACP FRANZCOG HonDSc HonDUniv HonFRACGP HonMD HonFRCPCH HonLLB (honoris causa) PhD, FRACP