Mastering language is an important milestone during children’s development. Early language development is linked to children’s later school performance, their mental health and wellbeing, and educational outcomes Our group aims to identify genetic mechanisms underlying word production and comprehension during infancy and toddlerhood as part of our work in the EAGLE consortium. In addition, we apply genomic tools to characterise the developmental processes contributing to language learning. In particular, we apply multivariate models to describe the structure of genomic and non-genomic factors. For example, our analyses aim to disentangle the developmental origins of language and literacy abilities, and we perform research to characterise the genetic overlap with neurodevelopmental conditions.
To learn more about our work you you can watch the following recordings:
podcast Mind the Kids - How motor & social skills shape language learning, as captured by genes (interview with Beate St Pourcain and Ellen Verhoef)
video abstract The developmental origins of genetic factors influencing language and literacy (video abstract with Beate St Pourcain and Ellen Verhoef).
Example publications
Verhoef, E., de Hoyos, L., Schlag, F., van der Ven, J., Olislagers, M., Dale, P., Kidd, E., Fisher, S. E., & St Pourcain, B. (2026). Developing language in a developing body: Genetic associations of infant gross motor behaviour and self-care/symbolic actions with emerging language abilities. The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 67(1), 41-54. doi:10.1111/jcpp.70021.
Verhoef, E., Allegrini, A. G., Jansen, P. R., Lange, K., Wang, C. A., Morgan, A. T., Ahluwalia, T. S., Symeonides, C., EAGLE-Working Group, Eising, E., Franken, M.-C., Hypponen, E., Mansell, T., Olislagers, M., Omerovic, E., Rimfeld, K., Schlag, F., Selzam, S., Shapland, C. Y., Tiemeier, H., Whitehouse, A. J. O. (2024). Genome-wide analyses of vocabulary size in infancy and toddlerhood: Associations with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and cognition-related traits. Biological Psychiatry, 95(1), 859-869. doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2023.11.025.
Verhoef, E., Shapland, C. Y., Fisher, S. E., Dale, P. S. & St Pourcain, B. (2021). The developmental genetic architecture of vocabulary skills during the first three years of life: Capturing emerging associations with later-life reading and cognition. PLOS Genetics 17: e1009144. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1009144.
Shapland, C. Y., Verhoef, E., Smith, G. D., Fisher, S. E., Verhulst, B., Dale, P. S., & Pourcain, B. S. (2021). Multivariate genome-wide covariance analyses of literacy, language and working memory skills reveal distinct etiologies. npj Sci. Learn. 6, 23 (2021). doi:10.1038/s41539-021-00101-y.
Verhoef, E., Shapland, C. Y., Fisher, S. E., Dale, P. S. & St Pourcain, B. (2020). The developmental origins of genetic factors influencing language and literacy: Associations with early-childhood vocabulary. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 62: 728-738. doi:10.1111/jcpp.13327.
Verhoef, E., Demontis, D., Burgess, S., Shapland, C. Y., Dale, P. S., Okbay, A., Neale, B. M., Faraone, S. V., Stergiakouli, E., Smith, G. D., Fisher, S. E., Børglum, A. D., & St Pourcain, B. (2019). Disentangling polygenic associations between Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, educational attainment, literacy and language. Translational Psychiatry 9: 35. doi:10.1038/s41398-018-0324-2.
St Pourcain, B., Cents, R. A., Whitehouse, A. J., Haworth, C. M., Davis, O. S., O’Reilly, P. F., et al. (2014). Common variation near ROBO2 is associated with expressive vocabulary in infancy. Nature Communications, 5: 4831. doi:10.1038/ncomms5831.
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