The First 1000 Days of Life: Investigating Early Markers for Promoting Healthy Language Development

Dear Colleagues,

The first 1000 days of life are recognized as a time of tremendous potential and enormous vulnerability, as the brain is developing rapidly. The basic skills that children develop during early infancy predict success in the later development of complex, high level abilities such as language, reading and writing, and social skills. Any difficulty or shortcut during this early stage of life have significant cascading effects on the child’s future proficiency in all these abilities.

Language acquisition is one aspect of development for which the first 1000 days are most critical. Language development is a multifactorial process influenced by numerous genetic and environmental factors. Wide interindividual differences exist in the way and rate at which children acquire language, and many neurodevelopmental disorders include impairments in language and communication skills. Therefore, a solid understanding of early markers of atypical language development across the first 2 years of life becomes crucial for early prevention and intervention.

The scope of the current Special Issue is to bring together scholars and experts in the field of typical and atypical linguistic development to provide a clearer picture of the crucial factors predicting language development, and to inform practitioners on how to support language acquisition in the earlier stages of development. Broadly, this Special Issue is seeking original submissions that examine the role of different factors related to typical and atypical linguistic development, which may include, but are not limited to, SES, preterm birth, multilingual contexts, educational poverty, familial risk condition, motor development, cognitive development and linguistic input.

Dr. Maja Roch
Prof. Dr. Alessandra Sansavini
Prof. Dr. Viola Macchi Cassia
Guest Editors

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