Expanded test of tense and agreement in sentence recall for children with DLD
Official title: Disorder within Dialects: An Expanded Test of Tense and Agreement in Sentence Recall for Children with DLD
Funded at Louisiana State Univ A&m Col Baton Rouge · NIH-11353796 · Data updated 2026-11-12
A new, dialect-informed language task helps identify tense and agreement issues in children with developmental language disorder who speak African American English or Southern White English.
Quick facts
| Grant type | R01 grant |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | Louisiana State Univ A&m Col Baton Rouge NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (Baton Rouge, United States) |
| Project start | July 1, 2022 |
| Project end | June 30, 2027 |
| Funding year | 2026 |
| Award (this year) | $516,169 |
| NIH project number | 5R01DC020434-05 |
| Project ID | NIH-11353796 on NIH RePORTER |
Who could benefit from this research
✓Could help
Children aged 0-11 with developmental language disorder who speak African American English or Southern White English in everyday settings.
✕Less likely to help
Children who do not have DLD or who speak mainstream English dialects may not benefit from this dialect-informed task.
What this research studies
This grant develops and tests a sentence recall task that uses dialect-informed scoring to better identify tense and agreement problems in children with DLD who speak non-mainstream English dialects. The project expands testing to a broader range of dialects and syntactic contexts to ensure the tool works across diverse linguistic backgrounds. If successful, clinicians could use the task to guide more accurate, culturally responsive language assessments and interventions.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: Clinicians would have a more accurate, dialect-aware tool to identify and treat tense and agreement difficulties in children with DLD across diverse English dialects.
How similar studies have gone: Earlier work in the Deep South showed the task could distinguish children with and without DLD within AAE and SWE.
Where this research is happening
-
Louisiana State Univ A&m Col Baton Rouge
Baton Rouge, United States Active
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Oetting, Janna B — Louisiana State Univ A&m Col Baton Rouge
- Study coordinator: Oetting, Janna B
About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page.