Monthly Archives: May 2017

CeLM talk Weds 10th May

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CCR members may be interested in the following CeLM talk: 

‘Can people with developmental disorders function successfully as bilinguals?

by Dr Napoleon Katsos – University of Cambridge

Date                     Wed 10th May 2017

Time                     15h00 – 16h30

Venue                  CHANCELLORS-G04

Among parents and professionals, there is a common, albeit empirically unsupported belief that bilingual exposure may be detrimental to the language development of children with neurodevelopmental and other related disabilities (Griswold, 2016). In this presentation we will first report the findings from a systematic review on the impact of bilingualism on the linguistic and social development of children with neurodevelopmental disabilities (Uljarević et al., 2016). We will then share some findings from research with bilingual children with ASD and their competence with core language and pragmatics (Reetzke et al., 2015). The overall conclusion is that while there are substantial gaps in research, bilingualism does not seem to have an adverse effect on the development of children with neurodevelopmental disabilities, while there are reasons to expect that it might even have a beneficial impact in certain respects. We will conclude by outlining a new project that will address some of the gaps in the literature.

Griswlod, A. (2016). http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/for-children-with-autism-multiple-languages-may-be-a-boon/

Reetzke, R, Zou, X., Sheng, L., & Katsos, N. (2015). Communicative Development in Bilingually Exposed Chinese Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 58(3):813-25.

Uljarević, M.. Katsos, N., Hudry, K. and Gibson, J.L. (2016). Multilingualism and neurodevelopmental disorders – an overview of recent research and discussion of clinical implications. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. 10.1111/jcpp.12596