Early Language Development in the Digital Age

ended

Despite the rapid change in children’s ecology and the rapid advance of technology, research on the impact of digital technologies on children’s communication and language development is still scarce and highly fragmented with no unitary approach across disciplines. The central scientific goal of e-LADDA is to establish whether the new and quite intuitive interactions afforded by digital tools impact on young children’s language development and language outcomes in a positive or adverse way, and respond to the need to train new brands of interdisciplinary researchers to support this scientific goal. We further aim to establish exactly what factors in both the technology itself and the communication channel advance language learning and growth or may impede it. This goal will be pursued from a highly interdisciplinary and cross-sectorial perspective bridging between research disciplines and methodologies and in collaboration with industry and the non-academic public sector. The main objectives of e-LADDA are 1) to provide a platform for the training of the next generation of scientists drawing for the first time on interdisciplinary perspectives from basic, applied and translational research on language learning in the digital age, 2) to provide a unified research approach to the benefits and drawbacks of digital technologies for young childrens’ language learning, 3) transform and develop new digital solutions that benefit learners, and 4) to provide guidance to policy makers, educators, practitioners and families in how emerging digital environments should be navigated, regulated and transformed. The ESRs will benefit from interdisciplinary training through substantial mobility, and direct collaboration across a complementary team of beneficiaries and partners at the forefront of interdisciplinary approaches to digital technology and language learning.