Project title
Exploring late language development through cross-syndrome comparisons: The search for universal markers of language impairment
Project description
Cross-syndrome and cross-linguistic comparisons are crucial in our quest to establish reliable diagnostic indicators of language impairment in different cultural and socio-economic contexts. Such comparisons have important implications for clinical intervention programmes, which in turn strengthen the cross-disciplinary research interaction, critical to innovation. In some regions of Europe, notably in the countries of former Yugoslavia, research on these topics is almost non-existent.
Building on the achievement of the ATLAS group in the Covid cohort of 2021-2022, Aleksandra Perovic aims to map out a picture of late developing phenomena in English and in her native languages, Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian, in populations with developmental disorders such as Williams syndrome and Down syndrome. Her research project questions whether cross-linguistic comparisons (comparing two or more different languages) and cross-syndrome comparisons (comparing two or more developmental disorders) can help us establish reliable diagnostic indicators of language impairment, across languages and across cultural and socioeconomic contexts, during the school years.
Selected publications
Perovic, A., & Wexler, K. (2018). Teasing apart explanations of a developmental delay in Binding: Experimental evidence from the comparison of Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and Williams syndrome. Language Acquisition, 25(1): 24-38.
Mattiauda, E., Hassiotis, A. & Perovic, A. (2022). Narrative language abilities in adults with Down syndrome: A remote online elicitation study using the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN). Frontiers in Communication. 7:841543. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2022.841543
Perovic, A., Filipović Đurđević, D. & Halupka-Rešetar, S. (2022). The effect of bilingualism on executive functions when languages are similar: a comparison between Hungarian–Serbian and Slovak–Serbian young adult bilinguals. Memory & Cognition. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-022-01345-8