Language Acquisition Intervention: A Prototype in Supplemental Children’s Education Through Media

The purpose of this project is to design a game which will help narrow the divide in child development between households and improve vocabulary skills. It has been found that there is a positive correlation between parent’s speaking with their children and the child’s educational development, particularly in language (Fernald, Marchman, & Weisleder, 2013). This is thought to be a result of the child being exposed to more words more often, which aids in their language development and continues to assist in their educational development over time. Further studies have also indicated that early life interventions, such as educational tv shows and games such as Sesame Street, can benefit a child’s cognitive development, even in households with lacking parental involvement (Kearney & Levine, 2019), or in children living with a specific learning disability. This game will be made with similar goals in mind, using preexisting research on successful interventions to formulate a game that will assist children in their long-term language development by expanding their vocabulary. The game will also contain a program that can anonymously track the progress of participants longitudinally, which will monitor the helpfulness of the program as an educational tool over time. That same program can be used to update the program over time as well, providing more helpful word lists and a larger pool of words across a wider age range.B.S. (Bachelor of Science