Laurence Leonard

Areas of Expertise

• Language Disorders in Children; Cross-Linguistic Research; Language Development; Language Intervention

HHS Signature Research Area(s)

• Developmental Health and Wellness

Biography

My research is directed at understanding the nature of childhood language disorders, with special reference to children with developmental language disorder (DLD). I have been publishing research in this general area for over 40 years and have had NIH funding since 1980. In recent years, my research has covered three areas. First, I have studied the bases of the major grammatical symptoms seen in DLD, through cross-linguistic research and more detailed studies of how children with DLD interpret input sentences. Second, I have conducted treatment studies aimed at facilitating children’s abilities in grammar. Most recently, my colleagues and I have undertaken an R01 project designed to determine the role that retrieval-based learning can play in increasing the word learning ability of children with DLD.  I have served as the major advisor of 21 PhD students and 6 postdoctoral fellows and place such activities at a high priority level.

Language Links Newsletter

Education

• PhD, 1973, University of Pittsburgh; CCC-SLP; BCS-CL

Websites

• Child Language Lab

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

• Conduct cross-linguistic research, emphasizing how clinical identification of language disorders is culturally and linguistically specific; dialect variation as related to diagnosis is covered in my classes.

Current Courses

• SLHS 523 - Language Disorders in Children
• SLHS 619 - Scientific Writing

Selected Honors/Awards

• Honors, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association - 2001
• Callier Prize, University of Texas at Dallas - 2015
• Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science - 2015
• Honorary Doctorate, Faculty of Medicine, Lund University, Sweden - 2021

Selected Grants

• Principal Investigator, Retrieval-Based Word Learning in Developmental Language Disorders, National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (R01 DC014708), Period: 08/01/21-07/31/26. Total: $2,556,470.