Researchers Tackle Reading Challenges in Language Disorders

Humans are hardwired for speaking. Learning to read doesn't come quite so naturally. It requires retraining different networks in the brain.

Mastering such a complex skill is understandably a struggle for many children. Especially those with developmental language disorder (DLD). Affecting about 1 in 14 kindergartners, this lifelong, underdiagnosed condition makes understanding and using language difficult.

Speech-language pathologist Stacey Pavelko spent years helping children with language disorders in public schools. Today, she researches better ways to identify and support kids with DLD. In one study, a preschooler wrote their whole first name while a peer with DLD managed only the first letter — a glaring gap in phonological awareness, the letter-sound connection underpinning reading. The takeaway: simple writing tasks belong in intervention plans.

Now Pavelko is turning her findings into everyday tools for families. With a Wertheim Endowed Innovation Fund Award, she's working with graduate students to create 3D-printed toys tailored to a child's specific needs. Each has a QR code linking to its own short video showing caregivers how play builds certain skills. One demonstrates how naming a toy's color ("Look at the red circle!") turns abstract language into something more concrete.

Next, she's offering free language screenings for preschoolers at FIU's Children's Creative Learning Center. Because "wait-and-see" approaches don't work. Children who aren't reading proficiently by third grade rarely catch up. The goal: reach them before that window closes.

"There's very little time to teach children the literacy skills they need throughout their life, but with early intervention, we have a real opportunity to help a kid achieve all of their dreams."