School Readiness
Create strong foundations for early learning.
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Young Children’s Language Development
Young children’s language development begins at birth and forms the foundation for school readiness and long-term achievement. Research shows that early, responsive interactions shape children’s brain development and predict later success in reading, math, executive functioning, and social-emotional development, yet caregivers may lack the resources to consistently support these interactions. We invest in research that studies how to strengthen early language environments to support the quality and quantity of caregiver-child interactions so that more children enter school with the foundational skills they need to thrive.
Completed
Dual-MEG Interbrain Synchronization During Turn-Taking Verbal Interactions Between Mothers and Children
This is a correlational study of brain activity of 23 mother-child pairs as measured by dual MEG (magnetoencephalography) machines during various verbal interactions.
Completed
LENA Grow’s Impact on Children’s Kindergarten Readiness
This white paper summarizes evidence from three quasi-experimental studies of LENA Grow, a professional development program for early educators designed to increase the number of interactions between teachers and children, in three different school districts.
Completed
Heart-To-Heart: Infant Heart Rate at 3 Months Is Linked To Infant-Directed Speech, Mother–Infant Interaction, and Later Language Outcomes
Using a sample of 31 three-month-olds, the research team assessed infant heart rate during mother-infant face-to-face interaction in a laboratory setting.
Completed
Infants’ Brain Responses to Social Interaction Predict Future Language Growth
The research team used infant magnetoencephalography (MEG) technology to measure five-month-old infants’ neural responses during live verbal face-to-face interactions with adults (treatment).
Completed
Mother-Infant Social and Language Interactions at Three Months Are Associated With Infants’ Productive Language Development in the Third Year of Life
This is a descriptive study examining associations between adult-child social interactions in the first three months of life—specifically maternal sensitivity, infant-directed speech (IDS), and conversational turn-taking (CT)—and children’s later language development.
Completed
Measuring LENA Grow’s Impact on Kindergarten Readiness
This study examined the impact of LENA Grow on young children’s school readiness outcomes in three school districts in South Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
Completed
Language Experience During Infancy Predicts White Matter Myelination at Age Two
This is a correlational study of parent and child language skills and youth brain development in early childhood for 22 parent-child pairs, as measured by home recordings of parent-child verbal interactions and estimates of white matter myelination as derived from quantitative MRI when the children were two years old.
Completed
The Effect of Exposure to Reach Out and Read on Shared Reading Behaviors
This is a correlational study that aims to leverage existing survey data from parents of children ages six months to five years old who had brought their child to a well visit at one of 427 pediatric clinics in North and South Carolina.
Completed
The Impact of a Language-Based Intervention, a Two-Part Study
This is a small randomized controlled trial of LENA Grow, a language-based coaching program for early childhood teachers designed to improve communication skills.
Completed
Language Input in Late Infancy Scaffolds Emergent Literacy Skills and Predicts Reading-Related White Matter Development
This is a correlational study of parent and child language- and reading-related skills in early childhood for 53 parent-child pairs, as measured by the Language ENvironment Analysis System (LENA) and other measures of language development.
Completed
The Relationship Between Conversational Turns and Student Achievement
This is a secondary correlational analysis of data derived from a randomized controlled trial of a 13-week parenting course that was designed to encourage verbal interactions between parents and their young children, with the goal of improving kindergarten readiness.
In Progress
Evaluating the Impact of Reach Out and Read on Caregiver-Clinician Relationships and Pediatric Care Satisfaction
This study evaluates the impact of Reach Out and Read on caregiver-clinician relationships and parent satisfaction with pediatric care, and explores effects on well-child visit attendance and vaccine adherence.
Open Research Questions
Completed study findings aligned with this question in our repository include:
- Dual-MEG Interbrain Synchronization During Turn-Taking Verbal Interactions Between Mothers and Children
- The Effect of Exposure to Reach Out and Read on Shared Reading Behaviors
- LENA Grow’s Impact on Children’s Kindergarten Readiness
In-progress studies that address this question are:
Completed study findings aligned with this question in our repository include:
- Infants’ Brain Responses to Social Interaction Predict Future Language Growth
- Language Input in Late Infancy Scaffolds Emergent Literacy Skills and Predicts Reading-Related White Matter Development
- Language Experience During Infancy Predicts White Matter Myelination at Age Two
In-progress studies that address this question are:
We plan to fund work on this topic in 2026 and will share links to studies aligned with this question once grants have been approved.
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