Exploring late language development through cross-syndrome comparisons
Research Question
Can cross-syndrome comparisons help us establish reliable diagnostic indicators of language impairment, across languages and across cultural and socioeconomic contexts, during the school years?
Project Description
Cross-syndrome and cross-linguistic comparisons have important implications for clinical intervention programmes, which in turn strengthen the cross-disciplinary research interaction, critical to innovation. New methods will be devised to 1) provide a better understanding of the domains of language difficulties in children with speech, language and communication needs that will benefit from further linguistic analysis; 2) identify the shortcomings of language assessments currently used with primary and secondary school children of different language and socioeconomic backgrounds across Europe; 3) create assessment materials informed by linguistic theories.
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.
Perovic, A., Modyanova, N., & Wexler, K. (2013). Comprehension of reflexive and personal pronouns in children with autism: A syntactic or pragmatic deficit? Applied Psycholinguistics, 34 (4): 813-835.
Perovic, A. (2006). Syntactic deficit in Down syndrome: More evidence for the modular organisation of language. Lingua, 11 (10): 1616-1630.