Schneider Receives NSF Grant to Understand Child Language Development in Louisiana
10/17/2022
Dr. Julie Schneider, assistant professor in the LSU Department of Communication Sciences
& DisordersPhoto Credit: LSU
BATON ROUGE – Dr. Julie Schneider, assistant professor in the LSU Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders (COMD), and her co-investigator, Dr. Janna Oetting, professor in COMD and associate vice president of humanities, social sciences, and
allied fields in the LSU Office of Research & Economic Development, were awarded a
$365,766 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study how researchers measure and characterize the type of language input
children throughout the Deep South hear in their day-to-day lives. The grant, titled
“Informing Interventions: improving the measurement of children’s vocabulary knowledge
and caregiver input in the Deep South,” will examine whether the language children
hear and speak in the Deep South aligns with the way their vocabulary is tested, as
most research on this topic has been conducted in urban cities in the Northeast and
Midwest United States.
Led by Schneider, the study will be the first of its kind to investigate community-based
and dialect-based differences in vocabulary throughout the Deep South, in an effort
to improve existing interventions which seek to close academic achievement gaps in
childhood.
“Louisiana has such a rich culture, with a diversity of language variations, making
it extremely unique. Many existing vocabulary interventions take a “one size fits
all” approach, but why should we expect that children raised in Louisiana hear the
same type of language at home as children in other parts of the U.S.? This grant hopes
to reduce misclassifications of children’s language skills in Louisiana by more accurately
characterizing their language environment,” said Schneider.
This research aims to reduce misclassification of language delays or disorders in
children who speak nonmainstream dialects such as African American English (AAE) and
Southern White English (SWE) and reduce disproportionate discrimination against the
characterization of their language abilities.
Dr. Schneider’s research focuses on how biological and environmental influences interact
to impact a child’s path to learning and using language. Her research takes a cross-disciplinary,
multimodal approach by combining behavioral methods, electroencephalography (EEG),
and functional/structural MRI across the fields of neuroscience, psychology, education,
and communication sciences. By combining methods and theories from different fields,
her research seeks to bridge the gap between basic and applied questions. Schneider
is also the director of the Language, Environment and NeuroDevelopment Lab (LEND) at LSU.
About the LSU Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders
The LSU Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders (COMD) provides international
leadership in research, excellence in education and clinical training, and service
that advances the field by making effective communication a human right, accessible
and achievable for all. Learn more at lsu.edu/comd.
About the LSU College of Humanities & Social Sciences
The LSU College of Humanities & Social Sciences positions students, faculty, and staff
to be visionary leaders in their respective fields, a tradition of excellence that
began with the college’s inception in 1908. For more news and information about the
LSU College of Humanities & Social Sciences, visit hss.lsu.edu.
Contact Sarah Gaar Keller
LSU College of Humanities & Social Sciences
225-578-6906