This project includes data from 2 related studies. Wave 1 includes data from 68 toddlers who participated in the Vocabulary Acquisition and Usage for Late Talkers (VAULT) treatment protocol. For Wave 2, our main goal was to determine how many of these late-talking children showed an impairment in language or literacy in preschool or school-age years. We also examined their communication and cognitive strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, we explored what, if any, early indicators (e.g., demographics, SES, response to treatment) predicted these later outcomes and continued showing signs of language impairment. Only the first overall wave of data, VAULT treatment data from Alt et al., 2020; Alt et al., 2021; Alt et al., in 2025 and Mettler et al., 2023, is available at this point in time.
This project is being shared in part thanks to NIH support via grant 3R01DC015642-06A1S1 and the broader NIH TALK (Tackling Acquisition of Language in Kids). The TALK Initiative comes in response to congressional interest in research to support late talking children, and has since grown into an initiative with engagement across five institutes co-led by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), and with participation from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS).
