Program seeks Council approval for an initiative titled “Learning Disabilities Innovation Hubs”.
Despite progress as a field in our understanding and treatment of specific learning disabilities (SLDs) there remains a significant need to improve short- and long-term learning and broader public health outcomes for individuals experiencing poverty and/or residing in low-resource settings and those from historically, marginalized groups that continue to show performance differences in key learning domains (e.g., reading, math and writing). This proposed initiative renewal builds off success in recruiting children from under-represented groups and in mentoring the next generation of diverse scholars to tackle historically challenging and under-researched research topics key to addressing the public health needs of children and adolescents with SLDs. This initiative proposes to now tackle key, time-sensitive knowledge gaps, in a community-engaged manner, relating to how children utilize artificial intelligence tools to advance learning and socio-emotional development and the affordances that these tools can or should provide for the learner particularly those who struggle or have a specific learning disability.
In the last cycle of this initiative, NICHD supported 3 awards that have meaningfully enhanced NICHD’s Learning Disabilities investment in early math development, developmental progressions of word knowledge development and the role that early and ongoing environmental exposures to toxins may have in the development of learning difficulties and SLDs. Additionally, these projects are successfully engaging and developing a new cohort of diverse researchers prepared to continue these lines of research in the future. However, much still remains to be done to address the needs of struggling learners and those with SLD(s) in the rapidly changing environmental context that children learn, and this initiative proposes to tackle this head on.
The goals of this initiative include 1) serving as a catalyst to address the needs of diverse, under-represented populations in SLD research and beyond, 2) enhancing understanding of the role of technology in learning, 3) catalyzing a shift to consider more complex behavioral phenotypes in research projects and 4) speed the maturation of high-impact, high-risk science to the benefit of the broader research, practice and policy community.
This concept aligns with NICHD’s strategic plans’ emphasis on child adolescent health and the transition to adulthood, health disparities and disease prevention and aspirational goals of understanding technology exposure and media use, and the training of the next generation of scientists.
Program Contact
Brett Miller
Child Development and Behavior Branch (CDBB)
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