This project is completed.

We use the latest approaches in molecular genetics, neuro-imaging, epidemiology, biostatistics and health economics to investigate factors that affect and improve child language and development.

The Centre of Research Excellence in Child Language is an international collaboration of child language experts.

Why research child language?

Language impairment is common.

One in five children under five have difficulties understanding what is said to them and/or expressing themselves.

Language impairment has persistent and far-reaching consequences.

Children with a language impairment struggle to make and keep friends, regulate their behaviour and negotiate new experiences. Children face poorer educational, employment and mental health outcomes and are more likely to engage in antisocial behaviour and criminal activity. This affects us through increased welfare burdens and reduced national productivity.

Elevating child language to an issue that is core to the health of nations is central to the CRE’s vision. By 2017, the CRE will have created the world’s largest harmonised language repository, bringing language into the lexicon of non-communicable disease and population health. This language repository will provide an unprecedented opportunity to analyse how language develops, what goes wrong, what this costs for families and society, and when and how to intervene.