STAR Study
Researchers from EGLab evaluated language, intellectual, and socioemotional development in children adopted from Russia as compared to children raised in their biological families, and children raised in institutional environments. Children were evaluated with an assessment battery (approximately 1 1/2 hours in length) and parents were interviewed to provide relevant developmental information (approximately 1 hour). Qualified personnel conducted all assessments and interviews. Parents received a short report of their child's cognitive, language, and behavioral profile. Given the number of internationally adopted children, the task of evaluating the developmental trajectories of international adoptees and releasing this information back to the public is becoming a task of not only research interest, but also of social significance. Developmentally, the transition to a new environment, including transition to preschool and school, presents children with a novel set of experiences and demands that represent a substantial challenge for successful adaptation. We need to investigate both strengths and vulnerability points for adopted children and develop programs targeted to support families with adopted children and ensure that these children make a smooth transition to a new culture and new environments within this culture. We believe that our study can detect such strengths and vulnerability points and provide the data that are critically needed to advocate for targeted early intervention and prevention services.
Project Aurora
We propose to develop a comprehensive evaluation battery--the Aurora Battery--that will include multiple modules and will address the task of identification and development of intellectually gifted children. The battery will be designed to contain multiple modules so that it can be administered as a whole, or through an individual module, or through a combination of modules. The theoretical framework of the theory will be that of the theory of successful intelligence (Sternberg, 1997). The battery will be intended to meet needs of (a) individual parents concerned with their children's intellectual performance, of (b) teachers and counselors who wish to identify gifted students, and of (c) schools or school systems concerned with the task of identifying gifted children among their student body. Moreover, it is envisioned to encompass a variety of intellectual gifts manifested in a number of settings and, thus, to be sensitive to traditionally under-identified gifts of minority children and children with disabilities. Finally, the battery will be designed to incorporate both assessment and pedagogical traditions so that not only current, but also the potential levels of the child's intellectual performance can be evaluated
The OSH Project
The goal of the OSH project is to find a gene responsible for a risk for language difficulties. OSH is a group of villages in northern Russia that was populated centuries ago by only a few people, and isolated from outsiders so that there was substantial intermarriage among the villages’ residents. Because of the small gene pool, the probability that a member of the much-related residents will have a shared gene is high. About half the members of this population have a language impairment to some degree – mild speech, fluency, understanding, reading or writing difficulties to nearly no language at all. Currently, we have collected behavioral data on nearly all of the 200 children under 18 and a substantial number of the adults. We have collected blood samples and developed cell lines for more than 700 of the 900 individuals at least elementary-school age, and we have cheek-swab or DNA from saliva on the preschool children and babies. Work on this project is ongoing; we continue to collect new behavioral data to characterize the language impairments, experimental data to test the parameters of and hypotheses about the language impairments, and blood and saliva samples for our DNA library.
An Epidemiological Study of Learning Disabilities in Zambia
This project is a collaboration between research teams in the U.S. (where annual per capita income is approximately $34,870 USD) and Zambia (where annual per capita income is $320 USD). The two collaborating institutions are Yale University and the University of Zambia, but teams in both countries involve collaborators from other organizations: development agencies (USAID, The World Bank), universities (Oxford University, England, and Niilo Mki Institute, University of Jyvaskyla, Finland) for the U.S. team, and government agencies (Ministries of Education and Health) for the Zambian team. The aims of the work are to: (1) Capitalize on existing componential relationships and further develop holistic relationships between various parties involved in the capacity-building and research activities in Zambia, supported by a number of different donors providing developmental funds in sub-Saharan Africa. (2) Identify the most effective components of capacity building in Zambia by: (a) assessing, diagnosing, and treating children with specific and nonspecific learning disabilities*, (b) conducting epidemiological studies, (c) building large-scale databases, (d) establishing multidisciplinary collaborative teams, and (e) carrying out and evaluating educational interventions for children with special needs. (3) Deliver a number of workshops in the methodologies related to the proposed pilot studies. (4) Conduct 4 small-scale pilot studies of the prevalence and etiology of learning disabilities in Zambia, using epidemiologically, clinically, etiologically, and educationally informed research designs: (a) a development and validation study of an assessment battery for diagnosing learning disabilities*; (b) a pilot epidemiological study of specific and nonspecific learning disabilities* among children attending schools in the Eastern Province; (c) a pilot study of specific and nonspecific learning disabilities* among out-of-school children in the Eastern Province; (d) a pilot study of etiology of specific and nonspecific learning disabilities* in the Eastern Province of Zambia. (5) Collaborate with the University of Zambia on influencing policy decisions regarding the placement, education, and medical treatment of children with learning disabilities (both specific and nonspecific). *Two operational definitions of learning disabilities are used in the proposed research. Nonspecific learning disability refers to a condition in which the child performs at a level below his or her chronological age level on tests of general abilities, adaptive functioning, and age-appropriate domain-specific (language, literacy, numeracy) proficiency. Specific learning disability refers to a condition in which the child performs at a level below his or her age level in a specific domain (language, literacy, numeracy), but at or above age-level performance on tests of general abilities and adaptive functioning. Such broad definitions of specific and nonspecific learning disabilities are warranted, given that virtually no data are available on the status of children with special needs in Zambia. Thus, at this stage, limiting our broad-spectrum screening to a particular type of learning difficulty exhibited by children in Zambia appears to be premature.
Autism Studies
Autism is a genetic disorder diagnosed during early childhood development. Symptoms present in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) include very limited social interaction, restrictive and repetitive behaviors and severe learning and language delays. The EG lab has one of the largest collections of DNA for autism genetic research in the country. With over 140 nuclear families (parents and at least one child diagnosed with an ASD), our sample size exceeds 480 subjects and continues to grow. Participants are recruited for research studies through the Developmental Disabilities Clinic which is a part of the Yale Child Study Center. We are currently analyzing data for an association study involving six candidate genes.
For more information on our research interests please contact us at (203)785-4239.
For more information on research and services offered by Yale Child Study Center or the Developmental Disabilities Clinic please refer to their websites linked above.
In addition, EGLab conducts studies of hyperlexia in autism (contact Adam Naples) and collaborates on genetic and neuroscience studies of ASD with Dr. Flora Vaccarino and Dr. Ami Klin.
State of Connecticut Project
The Connecticut Youth Detainee Program serves a population of ~1,761 unique youth annually, with ~75% being 15 years or older (but younger than 18), 44% being African American, and 26% being Hispanic American. The average cost per bed is ~$110,700. Clearly, a successful program that decreases the percentage of recidivism and repeated detention is of great interest to federal and state authorities and tax payers. The primary objective of this study is to contribute to the relatively small body of literature on juvenile detainees and to determine the effectiveness of cognitive therapy in preparing youth for release and reentry into society. Specifically, the proposed study will evaluate the feasibility, acceptability, and effectiveness of Social Problem-Solving Training (SPST) in a sample of children and adolescents in the Connecticut Youth Detainee Program. The goal of the intervention is to reduce aggressive disruptive behavior, improve social problem-solving skills, maximize the likelihood of positive behavioral change, and improve mental-health care quality and delivery in Connecticut facilities. If the SPST intervention is proven efficacious, then future work will aim to implement this program as a regular component of services for the high-risk and highly vulnerable population of young detainees. For more information, please e-mail Dr. Lesley Hart.
Juvenile Detention Education Project
Juvenile Detention serves many functions, including continued quality education to children and adolescents during their stay apart from society. EGLab's Juvenile Detention Education Project systematically analyzes existing aspects of this unique educational process, including class demographics, in-and-out communication between detention centers and school districts, on-site educational assessments, as well as individualized curriculum planning that serves students' needs. This project aims to maximize educational benefits to student detainees, by facilitating timely receipt of educational records from a student's home school, on-site educational assessments for all students in detention who warrant them, remedial classroom instruction suited to learning needs, as well as development of a timely system that relays academic progress and performance data back to the school district upon the student's reentry into society.
Our intention is to ensure that children and adolescents in detention leave the facility with a digest of their educational record and any assessment data gathered while in detention. Once communicated to the student's destination school, this data will help ensure that a stay in detention serves not only the child or adolescent but also society in general by reinvesting the student, his/her parent or guardian and the school in a working educational partnership. We are pleased to undertake this project with the full cooperation and support of the State of Connecticut Judicial Branch, Court Support Services Division and Juvenile Detention Centers in Bridgeport, Hartford and New Haven.
A study in Ghana to develop teacher training programs on special education, prior to mainstreaming all schoolchildren
This is a large-scale project of which we are contributing to one subsection. It is part of the SEN (Special Education Needs) subdivision of the EQUALL (Education Quality for ALL) project which is funded by USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development). The goals of the project are:
1. To characterize and determine the prevalence of special needs in Ghanaian children, including mental retardation, hearing, vision, medical and physical disability, autism and other developmental delays, behavior problems including ADHD, conduct disorder, and reactive attachment disorder, learning problems including reading, spelling, mathematical, and mixed disorders, language problems including articulation, expressive, and receptive language disorders, and emotional problems including anxiety, depression, and phobias. This Fall we will conduct an epidemiological study of 1200 children in three school districts. In one district the language spoken is Twi, in another the language is Ewe, and in the third the language is Gonja. Half the students will be currently attending school, and half will be out-of-school children.
2. To develop a curriculum and textbook for inclusion in teacher training programs at universities in Ghana.
3. To train 1500 current teachers in teaching strategies for mainstreamed children with special needs.
4. To provide support for the mainstreaming of all special needs children in Ghana by the year 2015.
5. To continue to study special needs in Ghana by launching a large scale epidemiological study including 1600 in-school children and 1600 out-of-school children across five districts. As in the first epidemiological study, half the children will be girls, for whom educational opportunities are currently limited because of cultural norms.
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