Department of Language and Linguistic Science

UKRI Creating Opportunities Evaluation Development Fund awarded to Prof. Keren-Portnoy

Posted on 3 September 2024

A UKRI Creating Opportunities Evaluation Development Fund has recently been awarded to Professor Tamar Keren-Portnoy from the Department of Language and Linguistic Science.

The project is entitled “Evaluating the BabblePlay app intervention to encourage vocalising in infants with Down Syndrome”. The grant is in collaboration with Prof. Helena Daffern from the School of Physics, Engineering and Technology and Prof. Mona Kanaan from Health Sciences at York, Dr. Laura Boundy and Ms. Sab Arshad from Language and Linguistic Science, and with two external collaborators - Dr. Kelly Burgoyne from The University of Manchester and Prof. Sue Buckley from the 'Down Syndrome Education International' (DSE) charity, that seeks to improve early intervention and education for children with Down syndrome around the world.

The project aims to support better language outcomes for babies with Down syndrome, through a new intervention which makes use of BabblePlay, an app we have developed, to encourage babbling. We are investigating the feasibility of running a full scale Randomised Clinical Trial to test this new intervention.

"Our research has shown that babble practice changes the way babies listen to speech and equips them for starting to use words. This grant allows us to continue developing our research in more applied directions. It's very exciting when blue-sky ideas can be put to use in the real world and may actually turn out to change the lives of real people for the better - Prof. Tamar Keren-Portnoy, Dept. Language and Linguistic Science