| Biography | Contact | Keywords | Associated Projects |
|
Biography: The primary emphasis of my work over the last ten years has been on the valid measurement of language in context with particular emphasis upon the understanding of early discourse comprehension. Comprehension ability is notoriously difficult to measure in young children given compliance issues. Valid measurement of early comprehension is critical not only to our understanding of language development in general, but also to our understanding of language impairment and its long-term prognosis since the latter is significantly different when both expressive and receptive abilities rather than solely expressive abilities are impaired.My funded work on early comprehension has resulted in two new measures of early discourse comprehension, the Joint Story Retell and Expectancy Violation Detection Task which have been developed and evaluated in my lab. These new measures of early discourse comprehension seek to minimize the confounding memory and language production demands associated with the measurement of early comprehension, as well as address other compliance issues that interfere with reliable evaluation. Currently, I am involved in a project focussing on early identification of language comprehension impairments in toddlers and preschoolers. A microcomputer application for the evaluation of semantic comprehension of toddlers has also been developed in my laboratory. Additionally, I am involved in the identifying language impairments in children with developmental coordination disorder. |
The language and culture of my heritage is passed on to me orally. it's a different way off learning than how I am taught at school. How do I keep my traditional culture alive while learning to read and being immersed in the majority culture?
Reading is the core of learning and staying in school . improving reading skills with young Aboriginal children can open up the doors to future prospects.