Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore

APPLIED PSYCHOLINGUISTICS

Coordinator: Daniela Traficante (Associate Professor, Faculty of Psychology)

 

Members of the Research Unit: Alessandro Antonietti (Full Professor, Faculty of Psychology), Giovanni Gobber (Full Professor, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures), Savina Raynaud (Full Professor, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures), Maria Caterina Silveri (Full Professor, Faculty of Psychology), Silvia Gilardoni (Full Professor, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures), Elisabetta Lombardi (Associate Professor, e-Campus), Claudia Repetto (Associate Professor, Faculty of Psychology), Alice Cancer (Assistant Professor, Faculty of Psychology), Daniela Chieffo (Assistant Professor, Faculty of Medicine A. Gemelli), Davide Quaranta (Assistant Professor, Faculty of Medicine A. Gemelli), Emanuele Aloi (Ph.D. in Psychology), Chiara Andreoletti (Ph.D. in Linguistic and Literary Sciences), Valentina Rita Andolfi (Ph.D. in Psychology), Sara Magenes (Ph.D. in Psychology), Cristina Burani (ISTC - CNR, Rome), Naama Friedmann (Language and Brain Lab, School of Education, Tel-Aviv University, Israel), Claudio Giuseppe Luzzatti (Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca), Gabriele Miceli (CIMEC, University of Trento), Daniela Sarti (Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Neurologico Carlo Besta, Milan), Maximiliano Augustin Wilson (Département de réadaptation, Université Laval, Canada), Maryanne Wolf (Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, USA)


 

Presentation

The Research Unit in Applied Psycholinguistics has first and foremost cultural significance, emphasizing the centrality of the study of language from an interdisciplinary perspective. It provides a meeting space to bring into dialogue different looks on language processes and provide integrated models and methods, not only to stimulate experimental research projects on language, but also to design interventions in the educational and rehabilitation fields, in a life-span perspective.

Regarding the processes of communicative and language skill development in preschoolers, collaborative networks were built among some of the psychologists and linguists involved in the Research Unit to study typical and atypical processes of language acquisition. From this collaboration, assessment tools and intervention strategies have been produced, in which the observation of the acquisition of language skills and the development of mentalization processes play a central role. The encounter between theories and models on language acquisition processes (in L1 and L2), the study of specific learning disorders and educational intervention models proposed by glottodidactics has produced language enhancement proposals as part of a European-funded project aimed at consolidating an inclusive approach in secondary schools. In addition, there is a well-established collaboration among some of the members of the Research Unit on research and protocols for assessment and intervention for specific learning disorders, based on a close connection between neuropsychological models and the study of the developmental processes of language processing. Equally well-established is the interconnection between linguistics and neuroscience, which has been developing in recent years.

 

The objectives of the research unit are as follows:

  • Developing research projects on the relationship between language components and the functioning of specific cortical circuits;
  • Studying the comorbidity between primary language disorder and specific learning disorders, considering the role of linguistic and neurobiological components;
  • Developing assessment tools for communicative and linguistic competence in the early years of life, with a focus on narrative function and mentalization processes;
  • Developing assessment tools for reading disorders, based on linguistic and neuropsychological theories and models;
  • Designing empowerment interventions aimed at enhancing of language proficiency, based on language learning models and methodologies proposed by glottodidactics;
  • Designing rehabilitative interventions aimed at improving language proficiency, based on evidence on neuronal plasticity and implementation of language structure in cortical organization;
  • Promoting communication events, seminars and training activities aimed at external patrons.

 

The Unit's main areas of research are:

  • The relationship between language structure and cortical organization
  • Communicative and language processes in primary language disorder and specific learning disorders
  • Language learning patterns and bilingualism
  • The development of assessment tools for oral and written language proficiency
  • The development of interventions to strengthen and rehabilitate language function.

 


Webinars and conferences

The Research Unit is newly established (March 23, 2021), but from the collaboration of its members, several initiatives had already been promoted in previous months.

To illustrate the first results of the European project carried out in collaboration between psychologists and linguists, a webconference was organized on November 30, 2020 (www.includi.eu).

Two webinars were also held, presenting neuroimaging studies on the cortical circuits involved in sentence comprehension (Prof. Gabriele Miceli, Nov. 19, 2020) and written word comprehension (Prof. Wilson, Feb. 11, 2021).

 


Third mission activities

In May 2021, a contract was signed with KPMG for teaching activities for the training course entitled: "KPMG Implicit Bias Training"

 


Publications

Marelli, M., Traficante, D., Burani, C. (2020). Reading morphologically complex words: experimental evidence and learning models (pp. 553-592). In V. Pirrelli, I. Plag, W. U. Dressler (Eds.), Word knowledge and word usage: a cross-disciplinary guide to the mental lexicon, De Gruyter, Berlin.

Baglio, F., Pelizzari, L., Cabinio, M., Nemni, R., Traficante, D., Silveri M.C. (2020). Uncinate Fasciculus and word selection processing in Parkinson's Disease. Neuropsychologia, 146, no. 107504.

Sarti, D., Bettoni, R., Offredi, I., Tironi, M., Lombardi, E., Traficante, D., Lorusso, M. L. (2019). Tell me a story: socio-emotional functioning, well-being and problematic smartphone use in adolescents with specific learning disabilities. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 2369, doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02369.

Traficante, D., Marelli, M., Luzzatti, C. (2018). Effects of reading proficiency and of base and whole-word frequency on reading noun- and verb-derived words: an eye-tracking study in Italian primary school children. Frontiers in Psychology, doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02335

Burani, C., Marcolini, S., Traficante, D., Zoccolotti, P. (2018). Reading derived words by Italian children with and without dyslexia: The effect of root length. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, no. 647. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00647 

Di Tella, S., Baglio, F., Cabinio, M., Nemni, R., Traficante, D., Silveri, M. C. (2018). Selection processing in noun and verb production in left- and right-sided Parkinson's Disease patients. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, no. 1241. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01241  

Traficante, D., Marelli, M., Luzzatti, C., Burani C. (2014). Influence of verb and noun bases on reading aloud derived nouns: Evidence from children with good and poor reading skills, Reading and Writing. 27, 1303-1326. DOI 10.1007/s11145-013-9488-6

Traficante D. (2012). From graphemes to morphemes: An alternative way to improve skills in children with dyslexia. Revista de investigación en Logopedia, 2, 163-185.

Traficante D. (2007). LANGUAGE (in Psychology). In AA.VV., Encyclopedia Filosofica, Edizioni Bompiani.

Traficante, D., Burani, C. (2003). Visual processing of Italian verbs and adjectives: The role of inflectional family size.  In R. H. Baayen and R. Schreuder (eds.), Morphological Structure in Language Processing, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 45-64.