IU Learnability Project renews National Institutes of Health funding grant

IU’s Learnability Project recently received a $2.34 million, five-year renewal of its National Institutes of Health funding.

More than 1,000 children have received free, one-of-a-kind speech therapy through the program since its initial funding in 1985, according to an IU press release.

The Learnability Project is an interdisciplinary program in IU’s department of speech and hearing sciences and the department of linguistics, both part of the University’s College of Arts and Sciences, according to a press release.

Participating families are self-selected and receive free treatment for services researchers estimate are valued at about $4,400 per child.

Children who take part in the Learnability Project must be English-speaking 3 to 7 year-olds whose speech difficulties render them virtually incomprehensible.

The project is directed by IU professor of speech and hearing sciences Judith Gierut, principal investigator on the project, and her husband, Chancellor’s professor of linguistics and adjunct professor of speech and hearing sciences Dan Dinnsen, the co-principal investigator.

After years of working on parallel but separate research tracks – and pursuing separate funding – Gierut and Dinnsen finally merged their projects in 1997.

The merger brought together Gierut’s interest in how children learn, analyzing their day-by-day trajectories, and Dinnsen’s interest in how a child’s phonology changes through treatment, as well as whether correction of one speech problem influences another.

In addition to the core researchers, more than 75 IU undergraduate and graduate students have received research training and financial support through the project during its existence, now nearing 25 years of consistent National Institutes of Health grant funding, according to a press release.

“I think the real power and the beauty of our project and our merger is that we can address both the language and the cognitive ingredients that affect these children,” Gierut said in a statement. “And it was very appealing to the NIH for us to combine our labs – it’s more fiscally responsible.”