1985 — 2002 |
Olson, Richard K |
P01Activity Code Description: For the support of a broadly based, multidisciplinary, often long-term research program which has a specific major objective or a basic theme. A program project generally involves the organized efforts of relatively large groups, members of which are conducting research projects designed to elucidate the various aspects or components of this objective. Each research project is usually under the leadership of an established investigator. The grant can provide support for certain basic resources used by these groups in the program, including clinical components, the sharing of which facilitates the total research effort. A program project is directed toward a range of problems having a central research focus, in contrast to the usually narrower thrust of the traditional research project. Each project supported through this mechanism should contribute or be directly related to the common theme of the total research effort. These scientifically meritorious projects should demonstrate an essential element of unity and interdependence, i.e., a system of research activities and projects directed toward a well-defined research program goal. P50Activity Code Description: To support any part of the full range of research and development from very basic to clinical; may involve ancillary supportive activities such as protracted patient care necessary to the primary research or R&D effort. The spectrum of activities comprises a multidisciplinary attack on a specific disease entity or biomedical problem area. These grants differ from program project grants in that they are usually developed in response to an announcement of the programmatic needs of an Institute or Division and subsequently receive continuous attention from its staff. Centers may also serve as regional or national resources for special research purposes. |
Reading and Language Processes @ University of Colorado At Boulder
The objectives of this research project are to assess component skills in reading and spelling, related language skills, and perceptual skills in twins selected for deficits or normal function in reading and/or ADHD. Behavior-genetic analyses will be used to assess the genetic and environmental etiology for deficits in different component reading, language, and perceptual skills. Bivariate DF analyses and confirmatory factor analyses of twin data will be used to assess the genetic and environmental covariance among the component skills. Behavior-genetic analyses will also be used to validate subtypes and/or dimensions of individual difference in reading disabled children by assessing their differential genetic and environmental etiology. Children in identified subtypes will be studied for subtype-by-treatment interactions in Research Project 5. In collaboration with research projects 1 and 4, QTL analyses will be used to assess differential genetic linkage for deficits in component reading, language, and perceptual skills. In collaboration with research project 6, the twins' patterns of brain morphology will be compared with their behavioral profiles on component reading, language, and perceptual skills.
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1987 — 1998 |
Olson, Richard K |
R01Activity Code Description: To support a discrete, specified, circumscribed project to be performed by the named investigator(s) in an area representing his or her specific interest and competencies. |
Computer-Speech Feedback in Text For Dyslexic Children @ University of Colorado At Boulder |
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1990 — 2000 |
Olson, Richard K |
P50Activity Code Description: To support any part of the full range of research and development from very basic to clinical; may involve ancillary supportive activities such as protracted patient care necessary to the primary research or R&D effort. The spectrum of activities comprises a multidisciplinary attack on a specific disease entity or biomedical problem area. These grants differ from program project grants in that they are usually developed in response to an announcement of the programmatic needs of an Institute or Division and subsequently receive continuous attention from its staff. Centers may also serve as regional or national resources for special research purposes. |
Computer-Based Remediation of Reading Disabilities @ University of Colorado At Boulder
The proposed research will integrate the diagnostic strengths and behavior-genetic analyses of Research Projects I, II, and III with our studies of computer-based remediation for word decoding problems in disabled readers. During each year, 20 reading disabled twin pairs tested in Projects I, II, and III will read interesting stories on the computer for a half hour each day, in the home, over a six month training period. They will target difficult words in the stories with a mouse for immediate orthographic and speech feedback. The computer will emphasize important relations between word or subword letter groups and their corresponding speech sounds by displaying the letter patterns in reverse video while a highly intelligible speech synthesizer simultaneously pronounces them. The relative benefits of segmented and whole-word feedback for the remediation of reading and phonological deficits will be compared. A subgroup of disabled readers will also receive computer-based training in phoneme awareness before reading on the computer. Interactions will be examined between-the different treatment effects and individual differences in disabled readers' initial profiles of component reading and language skills measured in Research Projects I, II, and III.
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2000 — 2009 |
Olson, Richard K |
R01Activity Code Description: To support a discrete, specified, circumscribed project to be performed by the named investigator(s) in an area representing his or her specific interest and competencies. |
Longitudinal Twin Study of Early Reading Development @ University of Colorado At Boulder
The proposed research would assess the etiology of individual differences in prereading and early reading development, and their covariation with individual differences in attention/hyperactivity. We will conduct a longitudinal study of 608 identical and fraternal twin pairs, beginning at 4 years of age, and continuing through their early reading development at the end of kindergarten, first grade, and second grade. The twin data will be used to explore the contributions of genetic, shared-environmental and non-shared environmental influences to individual differences in important pre-reading skills and attention in preschoolers, as well as genetic and environmental links between preschool behavior and subsequent reading development and attention in the early grades. Measures for the preschool children will include a "dynamic" assessment of their ability to learn sensitivity to phonemes in words, as well as measures of other language skills and attention/hyperactivity that are believed to be important in early reading development. Specific environmental influences will be explored using parent and teacher questionnaires and home observations. We plan calls for combining the data from the proposed U.S. twin study sample and a smaller sample of Australian twins included in a parallel study by these investigators that will use the same measures and sampling procedures. While the statistical power of the U.S. sample will be sufficient to address the central questions regarding individual differences, the combined U.S. and Australian samples will allow the assessment of whether genetic and environmental influences are similar for deviant-group membership (i.e., reading disability, attention deficit disorder) versus individual differences across the normal range. These unique longitudinal data from young twins, including dynamic and static measures of prereading skills, environmental measures, and attention measures, will provide important new evidence regarding the genetic and environmental etiology of individual differences across a critical period of reading development from preschool through second grade.
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2000 — 2007 |
Cole, Ronald Olson, Richard Caccamise, Donna Snyder, Lynn Kintsch, Walter [⬀] |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Scalable and Sustainable Technologies For Reading Instruction and Assessment @ University of Colorado At Boulder
Kintsch Summary
The project will plan for the creation and assessment of an ambitious program to improve reading and writing achievement with the participation of Boulder Valley School District (K-12) and the State of Colorado Department of Education. The project brings together a team of cognitive scientists, speech scientists, educational researchers, computer scientists, administrators and educators to work to design an program that uses state-of-the-art language technologies to help students learn to read fluently and to write effectively and creatively.
Specific objectives of the planning phase include (a) establishing the full interdisciplinary team, (b) working with administrators and educators in Colorado schools to create an integrated program in which interactive learning tools optimally complement and enhance existing teaching methods, (c) developing an evaluation plan that will assess the effectiveness of the program. The work will be performed in close collaboration with teachers, including the design of an initial program in which reading tutors will be used to recognize and interpret students' reading and writing behaviors and provide feedback to improve phonological awareness, reading fluency, comprehension and composition skills. Though much of the current work of members of the team is focused on early reading instruction; some of the methods (e.g., the comprehension-based methods that facilitate reading to learn) are also relevant for later grades.
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2001 — 2002 |
Olson, Richard K |
P50Activity Code Description: To support any part of the full range of research and development from very basic to clinical; may involve ancillary supportive activities such as protracted patient care necessary to the primary research or R&D effort. The spectrum of activities comprises a multidisciplinary attack on a specific disease entity or biomedical problem area. These grants differ from program project grants in that they are usually developed in response to an announcement of the programmatic needs of an Institute or Division and subsequently receive continuous attention from its staff. Centers may also serve as regional or national resources for special research purposes. |
Reading, Language and Attention Development @ University of Colorado At Boulder
The Colorado Learning Disabilities Research Center and Brian Byrne's research group at the University of New England in Australia will collaborate to assess genetic and environmental influences on the early development of reading and attention, and will attempt to identify the specific psychological processes that mediate these influences. We propose to recruit and test 340 twin pairs in Australia at preschool age to minimize contamination of our measures with reading experience, and to retest the twins at the end of kindergarten, first and second grade, to monitor growth during this critical period of early reading development. Project V will use the same measures with the Australian twins as those used in a companion project to be conducted with twins in Colorado under a new 5-year R01 grant from NICHD (608 pairs), and a smaller project currently underway in Australia, funded by the Australian Research Council (110 pairs). The Australian twins, combined with the Colorado twins (1,058 pairs total), will substantially increase statistical power for exploring the genetic and environmental etiology of both high and low performance in this large epidemiological sample. The proposed epidemiological sample and developmental/longitudinal design beginning in preschool will complement cross-sectional research with older school- history RD- and/or ADHD-selected twins studied in projects I-IV.
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2006 — 2010 |
Olson, Richard K |
R01Activity Code Description: To support a discrete, specified, circumscribed project to be performed by the named investigator(s) in an area representing his or her specific interest and competencies. |
Longitudinal Twin Study--Early Reading Development
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proposed research will complete the first international longitudinal twin study of genetic and environmental influences on pre-reading and early reading-related skills from preschool through the end of kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd grades, when children "learn to read", and at the end of 4th grade, when children "read to learn." Preschool data from measures of attention, phonological awareness, rapid naming, verbal memory, vocabulary, grammar, morphology, and print knowledge are being used to form reliable composite scores and latent traits for concurrent and developmental behavior-genetic analyses. Over the next 5 years, we propose to complete follow-up assessments of reading and related skills for 568 twin pairs through the end of 2nd grade, and extend the longitudinal design to the end of 4th grade with increased emphasis on the twins'reading and listening comprehension, and on their print exposure. Environmental measures related to the twins'reading and language development are included to help identify specific factors that contribute to behavior-genetic estimates of influences from shared and non-shared environment, and to identify potentially important genotype-environment correlations in reading and language development. The twin data from the Colorado study will be compared and combined where appropriate with twin data from parallel studies in Australia and Scandinavia for more powerful analyses of individual differences and disabilities in reading and related skills. Previous twin research with older children and adults has shown strong genetic and weaker environmental influences on both individual differences and group deficits in reading and related skills, but the developmental pathways for these influences and their implications for intervention are not well understood. Completion of the proposed longitudinal twin study from preschool through the 4th grade will provide important new evidence regarding the genetic and environmental etiology of individual differences and disabilities across this critical period of early reading development.
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2006 — 2017 |
Olson, Richard K |
P50Activity Code Description: To support any part of the full range of research and development from very basic to clinical; may involve ancillary supportive activities such as protracted patient care necessary to the primary research or R&D effort. The spectrum of activities comprises a multidisciplinary attack on a specific disease entity or biomedical problem area. These grants differ from program project grants in that they are usually developed in response to an announcement of the programmatic needs of an Institute or Division and subsequently receive continuous attention from its staff. Centers may also serve as regional or national resources for special research purposes. |
Differential Diagnosis in Learning Disabilities
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The long-range objectives of the Colorado Learning Disabilities Research Center (CLDRC) are the identification, characterization, validation and amelioration of reading disabilities (both word-level and comprehension), writing disabilities (both writing mechanics and composition), and ADHD, the most prevalent and often co-morbid disorders of childhood. To accomplish these objectives, the CLDRC employs a unique approach that assesses the extent to which genetic and environmental influences underlie these disorders, and that uses covariation in etiology to understand whether deficits in component skills of reading and writing are manifestations of a single syndrome or represent separate subtypes. Test batteries that include psychometric measures of cognitive and academic abilities and processing speed (Project I), word reading, writing, and phonological processes (Project II), ADHD and executive functions (Project III), and reading and listening comprehension (Project V) will be administered to a sample of identical and fraternal twins and their siblings in which at least one member of each twin pair has a reading or writing disability, to an independent sample of twins and their siblings in which at least one member of each twin pair has ADHD, and to a comparison group of twins and their siblings with no school history of reading or writing disabilities or ADHD. Resulting data will be used to assess the etiologies of reading and writing deficits and ADHD, and their comorbidity, as well as their covariation with measures of phonological awareness, phonological decoding, orthographic coding, vocabulary, listening comprehension, processing speed, and executive functions. Project VI will address these questions longitudinally in the CLDRC sample and in a parallel unselected sample of twins. To identify causal mutations in genes and regulatory regions, deep sequencing will be performed from DNA samples extracted from saliva from families of all twin pairs and siblings (Project IV). Administrative and Service core units will be responsible for coordinating the activities of the si research projects, ascertaining and scheduling subjects, obtaining questionnaire data and saliva samples, disseminating data, supervising student training, and administering the Center budget.
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2007 |
Olson, Richard K |
R01Activity Code Description: To support a discrete, specified, circumscribed project to be performed by the named investigator(s) in an area representing his or her specific interest and competencies. |
Longitudinal Twin Study of Early Reading Development (Supplement) @ University of Colorado At Boulder
[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proposed research will complete the first international longitudinal twin study of genetic and environmental influences on pre-reading and early reading-related skills from preschool through the end of kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd grades, when the primary focus is on "learning to read", and at the end of 4th grade, when the primary focus is on "reading to learn." Preschool data from measures of attention, phonological awareness, rapid naming, verbal memory, vocabulary, grammar, morphology, and print knowledge are being used to form reliable composite scores and latent traits for concurrent and developmental behavior-genetic analyses. Over the next 4 years, we propose to complete follow-up assessments of reading and related skills for 487 twin pairs through the end of 2nd grade, and extend the longitudinal design to the end of 4th grade with increased emphasis on the twins' reading and listening comprehension, and on their print exposure. Environmental measures related to the twins' reading and language development are included to help identify specific factors that contribute to behavior-genetic estimates of influences from shared and non-shared environment, and to identify potentially important genotype-environment correlations in reading and language development. The twin data from the Colorado study will be compared and combined where appropriate with twin data from parallel studies in Australia and Scandinavia for more powerful analyses of individual differences and disabilities in reading and related skills. Previous twin research with older children and adults has shown strong genetic and weaker environmental influences on both individual differences and group deficits in reading and related skills, but the developmental pathways for these influences and their implications for intervention are not well understood. Completion of the proposed longitudinal twin study from preschool through the 4th grade will provide important new evidence regarding the genetic and environmental etiology of individual differences and disabilities across this critical period of early reading development. Reading disabilities and related difficulties in attention and language skills are important public health problems. The proposed research will advance our understanding of their genetic and environmental etiology, their remediation, and their expression in a highly representative population sample of identical and fraternal twin pairs. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]
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2007 — 2016 |
Olson, Richard K |
P50Activity Code Description: To support any part of the full range of research and development from very basic to clinical; may involve ancillary supportive activities such as protracted patient care necessary to the primary research or R&D effort. The spectrum of activities comprises a multidisciplinary attack on a specific disease entity or biomedical problem area. These grants differ from program project grants in that they are usually developed in response to an announcement of the programmatic needs of an Institute or Division and subsequently receive continuous attention from its staff. Centers may also serve as regional or national resources for special research purposes. |
Administrative Core
Administrative Core Unit A fulfills three important roles for the Center. First, the Administrative Core is responsible for the ascertainment and retention of participants for all components of the study. During the first day of testing. Administrative Core staff collect saliva samples from the twins, their biological siblings, and their biological parents, and mail the samples to Dr. Shelley Smith's laboratory at the University of Nebraska Medical Center so that DNA samples can be extracted, processed, and analyzed by Project IV staff. The second major responsibility of Administrative Core A is to ensure that all study data are efficiently collected, verified, and consolidated across the six research projects, and to coordinate the synthesis and distribution of an updated summary data file with data from all Research Projects every three months. Finally, in collaboration with staff on Service Core B, Service Core A staff coordinate cross-project data sharing and implement and monitor the Center-wide protocol for data sharing with external collaborators and other qualified investigators in the field.
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2008 — 2010 |
Olson, Richard K |
P50Activity Code Description: To support any part of the full range of research and development from very basic to clinical; may involve ancillary supportive activities such as protracted patient care necessary to the primary research or R&D effort. The spectrum of activities comprises a multidisciplinary attack on a specific disease entity or biomedical problem area. These grants differ from program project grants in that they are usually developed in response to an announcement of the programmatic needs of an Institute or Division and subsequently receive continuous attention from its staff. Centers may also serve as regional or national resources for special research purposes. |
Reading, Writing and Language Processes
The central hypotheses of Research Project II are 1) that reading and writing are complex skills that depend on a number of component processes that have both shared and independent genetic and environmental etiologies in children with disabilities, and 2) that patterns of covariation in etiology will provide unique insights into the cognitive architecture underlying these skills and into the nature of learning disabilities. Project II will assess component processes in reading, writing, and related language skills in twins and siblings selected for deficits in reading and/or ADHD, and in normal-range control twins. The broad age range of the sample allows us to assess developmental differences in skills and in the expression of disabilities across grades 2-12. Our long-running assessment of word recognition, orthographic coding, phonological decoding, and phonological awareness will be continued to support more powerful and informative behavioral and molecular genetic analyses of these skills, but our main emphasis will be on the relations of these skills to reading fluency, reading and listening comprehension, writing, and higher-level language skills. Univariate multiple regression (DF) analyses will be used to evaluate the genetic and environmental etiologies for deficits in each skill. Bivariate DF analyses and confirmatory factor analyses of twin data will be used to assess the genetic and environmental covariance among the different skills. Behavior-genetic analyses will also be used to validate subtypes and/or dimensions of individual differences among children with reading and writing disabilities by assessing their differential genetic and environmental etiology. In collaboration with Research Projects I, III, and IV, QTL analyses will be used to assess genetic linkage and association for deficits in different reading, writing, and language skills. In collaboration with Research Project III, we will explore the relations of these deficits to different symptoms and cognitive components of ADHD. In collaboration with Project V, we will explore the effects of intense computerassisted intervention in 2nd to 4th grade twins'homes for the remediation of deficits in these skills. New and recently introduced measures included in Project II will allow the first thorough analysis of genetic and environmental influences on component processes in reading fluency, reading comprehension, listening comprehension, and writing.
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2012 — 2016 |
Olson, Richard K |
P50Activity Code Description: To support any part of the full range of research and development from very basic to clinical; may involve ancillary supportive activities such as protracted patient care necessary to the primary research or R&D effort. The spectrum of activities comprises a multidisciplinary attack on a specific disease entity or biomedical problem area. These grants differ from program project grants in that they are usually developed in response to an announcement of the programmatic needs of an Institute or Division and subsequently receive continuous attention from its staff. Centers may also serve as regional or national resources for special research purposes. |
Reading, Writing and Phonological Processes
instmctions): The central hypotheses of Research Project II are 1) that reading and writing are complex skills that depend on a number of component processes with both shared and independent genetic and environmental etiologies in children with disabilities, and 2) that pattems of covariation in etiology will provide unique insights into the cognitive architecture underlying these skills and into the nature of learning disabilities. Project II will assess component processes in reading, writing, and related phonological skills in twins and siblings selected for deficits in reading, writing, and/or ADHD, and in normal-range control twins. Our long- running assessment of word recognition, orthographic coding, phonological decoding, and phonological awareness in Project II will be continued to support more powerful and infomnative behavioral and molecular genetic analyses of these skills, but our main emphasis w\\\ be on the relations of these skills to writing and to comprehension (Project V), and on writing's relations to processing speed, executive functions and ADHD assessed in Projects I and III. New measures of writing have been added to this project to allow the first thorough analysis of genetic and environmental influences on its component processes, with expanded assessment of compositional writing. Oral composition is also assessed to separate effects of composition from modality of response. The broad age range in the proposed sample will facilitate cross-sectional analyses of important developmental differences in writing and its relations to discourse skills assessed by reading comprehension, oral language, executive functions, processing speed, and ADHD. Univariate multiple regression (DF) analyses will be used to evaluate the genetic and environmental etiologies for deficits in each skill. Bivariate DF analyses and confirmatory factor analyses of twin data will be used to assess the genetic and environmental covariance among the different skills. Behavior-genetic analyses will also be used to validate subtypes and/or dimensions of individual differences among children with reading and writing disabilities by assessing their differential genetic and environmental etiology and gene x environment interactions. In collaboration with Research Project IV, QTL analyses will be used to assess genetic linkage and association for deficits in the reading, writing, and phonological skills assessed in Project II. RELEVANCE (See instructions): Reading and writing are critically important skills for academic and professional developmenL Leaming disabilities in these skills are important public health problems in need of better understanding of their classification and their genetic and environmental etiologies. The proposed behavior- and molecular-genetic studies on reading, writing, and related skills assessed in Project II will contribute to these goals.
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