Brain Awareness Night Speaker Spotlight: Dr. Daniela O'Neill

Next Thursday, March 12, is The Urban Child Institute’s annual Brain Awareness Night. In addition to Dr. J. Helen Perkins of the University of Memphis, we will welcome Dr. Daniela O’Neill, a professor of developmental psychology at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. She will speak on this year’s topic of literacy and language development.

As the director of the Centre for Child Studies, Dr. O’Neill has the ongoing opportunity to observe the language abilities of children. Part of her research focuses on the ways in which children communicate, and how this communication develops.

“What has really surprised me is just how incredibly rapid the growth of children’s language is,” says Dr. O’Neill. “They go from two-word speech at age 2 to complex sentences by age 3 that deal with a huge range of topics.”

In addition to gaining vocabulary, children begin to talk for longer stretches of time; they start to tell stories; and they begin to show joking and teasing behaviors. Before they can even use a crayon, they begin to display a point of view.

“Parents often remember when the word ‘actually’ came in because suddenly the child is saying, ‘Well actually, I…’ and the parents think ‘Where has my toddler gone?,’” laughs Dr. O’Neill. “What the children say is often really interesting: to see the world from their perspective, what they’re wondering about, what they’re questioning — it’s just so broad..

Children are naturally curious about language, but they need guidance.

“Parents are key,” says Dr. O’Neill. “Children learn language by being immersed in it; what parents say to them is the data they use to try and break into the language and figure out what it all means. The parents’ talk in the earliest stages gives children that input they need to analyze a language and figure out how it works..

But the role of a parent in the development of their children’s language reaches far beyond data input.

“With language comes information and knowledge,” says Dr. O’Neill. “The parents are sharing the knowledge of the culture, the conventions of the language, how you have conversations, certain phrases — there’s a lot of knowledge that’s being passed on to the child along with language.”

Early language development has long-term implications.

What’s being passed on to the children in those early years — or not being passed on — can affect them for the rest of their lives.

“There have been studies following children, often into adulthood, that show there are so many outcomes that are influenced by aspects of children’s language development, including quality of life,” says Dr. O’Neill. “You’ll find in research that it’s affecting academic outcomes, literacy, school retention rates and socio-emotional functioning and friendships—all sorts of things.”

And whether the outcomes in these areas are positive or negative, they affect not only the individual, but also the surrounding community.

“I think a strong language foundation for children should be valued by every member of the community, because those children will thrive and as a result the community will thrive as well,” says Dr. O’Neill. “It just impacts so many different domains.”

How can we know if a child is learning language successfully?

With such high stakes, how can parents know whether their children are developing this strong foundation that they need? To help answer this question, Dr. O’Neill, through years of research, developed the Language Use Inventory (LUI).

This standardized questionnaire used worldwide, measures the use of language in children 18 to 47 months of age. A speech pathologist might administer the questionnaire to a parent worried about her child’s development, and then use the results to help determine whether or not intervention would be necessary.

Through tools like the LUI, and the continued research conducted in labs such as Dr. O’Neill’s, we are continually learning about the development of children’s language, and how we as a community can help facilitate and encourage this growth.

UPDATE: Brain Awareness Night 2015 was a big success! Now everyone can learn practical literacy-building guidance from Dr. O’Neill and Dr. Perkins by watching videos of their presentations, reading the presentation transcripts or checking out their slides!