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OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (AP) — Ten-month-old Max Lyon smiled when a Sesame Street character appeared on a TV screen. He got startled when a jack popped out of a jack-in-the-box. He threw a toy penguin on the ground. He looked at a book. He burped.
This might seem like a normal day in the life of a baby, but for Kansas University researchers it could hold the key to understanding childhood language development, the Lawrence Journal-World (http://bit.ly/1tEr34y) reports.
At the KU Baby Lab at the university's Edwards Campus, researchers are studying how early attention skills in social settings impact language development later in life. The results of the five-year study could eventually reveal early warning signs of autism.
"For professionals who are trying to to identify developmental delays, it can be really challenging because there is so much difference in when children start using words," said Brenda Salley, an assistant research professor at KU and licensed clinical psychologist. "So we're hoping that with some of the things we learn from the study, we'll be able to identify some of those red flags."
KU has long been at the cutting-edge of research into early cognitive development. Former professor Frances Horowitz began opening the so-called baby labs in the 1970s. There are now three: the one in Overland Park, which mostly studies children who are developing normally; one in Lawrence that researches kids with autism; and one at KU Medical Center, which looks at the effects of early nutrition on cognitive development. This kind of work has only grown more important as diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder have continued to rise.
"This has been a longstanding historical strength for the university, and we're carrying on that tradition," said John Colombo, the director of KU's Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies, who helped found the Overland Park lab with Horowitz in the mid-1980s. He added that game-changing discoveries in early childhood development often start with the type of basic research the Edwards Campus baby lab is doing.
The current study there is trying to gauge how infants pay attention in social situations.
"We think that a child who may be more sophisticated in their attention to people may acquire language quicker than other children, in part because they may have more language-learning opportunities but also because something about that social information is particularly impactful for language development," Salley said.
The first phase of the study is for two years and about halfway finished. The second phase will be a three-year longitudinal study of children with signs of developmental delays. The research could ultimately lead to advancements in the way all infants are taught language.
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Information from: Lawrence (Kan.) Journal-World, http://www.ljworld.com
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