Understanding the emergence of language in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) graduates is critical for early identification and developing treatments to improve long-term outcomes. This longitudinal study tracked the development of infants (n=53) from ages 6 to 24 months. We focus on detailed coding of infant vocalizations and gestures during a 5-minute parent-child free-play video at a 12-month visit. We analyzed the frequency and variety of communication bids concerning standardized parent reports and direct language measures at 12 and 18 months. At 12 months, infants who vocalized more frequently had higher parent-reported expressive communication, r(46)=0.434, p=0.002, and receptive communication scores, r(46)=0.294, p=0.045. A similar pattern was found for the variety of infant vocalizations and 12-month parent-reported communication scores (rs=0.339*-0.453***). The type and variety of gestures were positively correlated with receptive language measures at 12 months (rs=0.296*-0.485**) but not in expressive language. A regression model predicting 18-month expressive vocabulary based on 12-month parent-reported communication (Vineland), directly-measured language (Mullen), variety of vocalizations, and frequency of gestures explained 58% of the variation in later vocabulary. The strongest predictors were the variety of vocalizations (b=0.332**) and frequency of gestures (b=0.393**). Findings suggest early vocalization patterns are valuable indicators of later language development in NICU graduate populations.

Seeking mental health (MH) information online is often the first step that college students take when considering MH support. However, there is limited research exploring the specific steps college students take and the reasoning behind their decisions when searching for MH information online, especially among racial/ethnic minorities, who may have distinct search behaviors shaped by their experiences navigating MH service access challenges. This study aims to identify the steps college students take when searching for MH information online and explore potential search behavior differences based on students’ racial/ethnic background. College students (N = 57) (81% female, 68% racial/ethnic minorities) interested in seeking MH services were interviewed on their current online MH search processes, with their behaviors and justifications recorded and analyzed with process mapping. Preliminary findings showed that students prioritized location in their search terms and viewed websites. Racial/ethnic differences were observed when searching for MH information: White students prioritized organizational credibility while racial/ethnic minority students focused on treatment costs and MH literacy. Mapping these search steps is important for identifying factors that may influence satisfaction with mental health websites. Analyzing search behavior differences reveals the help-seeking needs unique to racial/ethnic minorities, which guides future research on improving websites to enhance MH support and treatment access for these groups.

Emotion categorization is the ability to identify and group emotional cues, like facial expressions, tone, and context, into discrete categories. These early skills support children’s later communication, social competence, and academic success. Therefore, identifying factors that facilitate the understanding of emotion categories is crucial. Prior research shows that parents’ emotion language predicts children's later emotion understanding, but its direct impact on emotion categorization remains underexplored. Emerging research suggests that hearing emotion words specifically may aid children’s learning of emotion categories. Thus, this study aims to examine whether the frequency of emotion words heard from parents influences children's later accuracy in categorizing those emotions. We analyzed three emotion categories (happy, sad, and angry) across two datasets: (1) parental emotion word production in conversations with 11 to 30-month-olds from the CHILDES database and (2) three-year-olds' accuracy in sorting stereotypical facial expressions. Emotion word frequency and categorization accuracy were ranked for each child, and a Mann-Whitney U test with corrections was used to compare the distributions. We hypothesize that increased exposure to emotion words will be associated with higher categorization accuracy, and categorization performance will follow the frequency pattern: happy, angry, and sad. These findings will provide valuable insight into the role of parental language input in shaping early emotional understanding.

Families of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) often experience heightened stress due to increased caregiving demands, financial strain, and emotional challenges, which can shift parental resources. Siblings of children with ASD may take on additional caregiving responsibilities, experience feelings of neglect, or struggle with their own emotional well-being, making them particularly vulnerable to psychopathological symptoms. This study examines whether siblings of children with ASD close in age (or the same age) exhibit higher levels of internalizing (e.g., depression, anxiety) and externalizing (e.g., aggression, hyperactivity) symptoms compared to those without a sibling with ASD. Utilizing data from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, we conducted a one-way analysis of variance on the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) internalizing and externalizing scores at baseline (ages 9-10; F = 56). Our sample included 126 participants–63 siblings of children with ASD and 63 sex, age, and site matched sibling controls (participants without a sibling with ASD). Preliminary results indicate that siblings of children with ASD exhibit significantly higher levels of internalizing and externalizing symptoms than controls. These findings reinforce prior evidence that siblings of children with ASD may be at a higher risk of internalizing and externalizing symptoms early in adolescence, highlighting the need for interventions to support their well-being.

Children acquiring a language must represent and produce words with various characteristics. The Onset Principle predicts that given a choice, the beginning of a syllable (onset) must be a consonant. Vowel-initial words violate this, and children have been reported to repair them through various mechanisms. In our project, we first conduct a corpus study to characterize English-learning children’s input, then conduct an experiment to determine how toddlers produce and represent vowel-initial words. Their representations may include a mandatory, yet underspecified onset position, an onset position that can be filled only with a subset of highly frequent consonants, or an optional onset position. We find that children produce consonants in onset positions even when that goes against acoustic and allophonic cues, and accept both a context-accordant and a context-discordant consonant in the onset positions fairly frequently, lending support to the theory that 3.5 to 4 year olds represent vowel-initial words with an optional, but underspecified onset position. This finding can be applied cross-linguistically to our understanding of phonological development, especially to sandhi phenomena like French liaison.