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On Friday 20 June, Anouk Scheffer will defend her PhD dissertation ‘Early Phonology and Grammar of Children with Developmental Language Disorder’. In her dissertation, Scheffer provides detailed overviews of the phonological and grammatical development of three- to six-year-old children with a developmental language disorder (DLD).

Phonological and grammatical development

Children with DLD have severe language learning difficulties without a clear cause, often causing difficulties with grammar and speech sound production. In the Netherlands, they can attend specialised language intervention groups or special education schools where their language development is monitored frequently.

To track children’s development, clinicians need outcome measures that can capture (subtle) growth over short periods of time, such as a period of three months. With the overviews that Scheffer provides in her dissertation new outcome measures have been designed, which were used to examine the association between phonological and grammatical development.

Different types of measures

Scheffer’s research shows that young children with DLD do improve in their phonological and grammatical development over a relative short period time. The strength of the relation between phonology and grammar does decrease over time, indicating that the developmental trajectories in these domains are dynamic and not continuously related. These insights can help clinicians in designing interventions targeting phonology and/or grammar in different phases of language development.

Scheffer also underlines the importance of combining different types of measures (for instance, the use of sentence structures in combination with the correctness of these structures) in monitoring children’s grammatical and phonological development. This approach can lead to more effective interventions that address the specific phonological and grammatical needs of each child.

Prior to her defence, Scheffer will give a layman’s talk starting at 12:00.