Child Hearing, Language, Literacy and Deafness Lab
The CHLLD Lab mission is to conduct innovative research to promote the development of language and literacy skills in children whose growth is shaped by developmental diagnoses or difficulty early life experiences.
Student Involvement
Students participate in the CHLLD lab as research assistants, as undergraduate honors project students, as thesis students, and as PhD students.
Currently, the CHLLD lab includes 12 undergraduate students, 10 masters students, 3 PhD students, and a postdoctoral scholar, all working with Dr. Lund to meet the CHLLD lab research mission.
In the past 10 years, the CHLLD lab has sponsored:
- 22 thesis projects
- 15 undergraduate honors projects
Today, more than 1.1 million children have a diagnosis that impacts their language development. In Fort Worth, students in the CHLLD lab have participated in projects that have provided:
- More than 500 hours of free child language, speech, cognitive and literacy assessments.
- More than 200 hours of free, cutting-educe language and literacy intervention to children.
Participate in a Study
The CHLLD lab is always recruiting children to participate in our studies.
If you want to know more about the studies in the CHLLD lab and whether or not your child qualifies, contact e.lund@tcu.edu or call 817-257-4450.
Research Areas
Language and Literacy Development in Children Who Are Deaf and Hard of Hearing
Explore how characteristics of children, and their environments contribute to their language and literacy knowledge.
Word Learning in Children with Language Disorders
Explore how characteristics of children (e.g., using a cochlear implant, using an AAC device) influence the word learning process and not only the word learning outcome.
Influences of the language environment on language learning
Investigate how adverse child experiences influence language and the ways that speech-language pathologists can respond.
Lead Faculty
Emily Lund, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, is a Professor in the Davies School of Communication Sciences and Disorders at TCU, and director of the CHLLD lab. With a background in economics and Spanish, she holds a doctorate in speech and hearing sciences from Vanderbilt University.
Lund is a former clinical bilingual speech-language pathologist and researches language learning in monolingual and bilingual children with hearing loss. Her work is consistently funded by the National Institutes of Health. U.S. Department of Education and the American Speech Language Hearing Foundation. She received the Fort Worth Business Press Healthcare Heroes Award in 2017 for her contributions to caregiver coaching for children who are deaf and hard of hearing and she received the Deans’ Research and Creative Activities Award in 2025. In the Davies School, she teaches graduate-level courses in research in communication sciences and disorders and early intervention.