Dr Eirini Sanoudaki (Bangor University)
October 16th, 2025. 4.00pm – 5.00pm (Health Theme)
Bilingual Development in Children With Developmental Conditions: Insights from Wales.
While research on bilingualism has made significant progress in recent decades, relatively little is known about bilingual development in individuals with disabilities or developmental conditions. This gap in the literature has often led to recommendations against bilingual exposure for children with such conditions. This talk will present recent work from the Child Bilingualism Lab, which examines language development in bilingual children both with and without developmental conditions. Based in bilingual Wales, researchers in the lab have been investigating bilingual development in neurotypical children as well as those with diagnoses such as Down syndrome, Rett syndrome, and autism, for over a decade. In addition to empirical research, the lab engages in intervention and outreach activities aligned with the Welsh Government’s goal to increase the number of Welsh (bilingual) speakers.
Professor Sonali Nag (University of Oxford)
November 13th, 4.000pm – 5.00pm (Education Theme)
Developing Contextualised Oral Language Assessments: Mapping the Local Within the Local.
Innovations in the localising of language assessments have been slow relative to other areas such as math assessment. This may be attributed to a challenge that is more acute in language assessment – the need for a coherent test construction framework for tests to capture well the features of a language and be sensitive to the setting, especially when there are dialects, and the not well understood processes within multilingualism. In this paper three tests of oral language are presented as exemplars of the challenges to localisation in language assessment: a test each of vocabulary, morphosyntax and narrative expression. Test localisation is examined in the context of four domains: a) construct b) context c) meaningfulness and d) psychometric properties. The results are mapped against robustness at the level of psycholinguistic characteristics of the target language (construct definition), context (languages in the setting and medium of language instruction), meaningfulness (user engagement, and usability) and psychometric properties (factoring in the local social stratifiers within the local context). Taken together, a proposal is made for developing oral language assessments that acknowledges the multi-faceted nature of both the language domain and the localisation process. This work is of particular relevance to assessment in the less-studied languages.
Professor Christos Pliatsikas (University of Reading)
December 11th, 4.00pm – 5.00pm (Neuroscience and Cognition Theme)
A Comprehensive Protocol to Study the Effects of Multilingualism on Cognition and the Brain in Patients with Progressive Neurological Diseases.
Multilingualism, the cognitively demanding experience of speaking multiple languages, has been linked to measurable effects on cognition and brain structure and function. These effects, attributed to the constant activation of multiple languages, may contribute to cognitive reserve, expressed as delayed cognitive decline in multilinguals diagnosed with progressive neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s and Parkinson’s diseases, and Multiple Sclerosis. However, the evidence remains inconsistent due to methodological shortcomings, including variations in defining multilingualism and inadequate accounting for other lifestyle factors that may also promote cognitive reserve. To address these limitations, we developed a comprehensive protocol which incorporates detailed measurement of factors that are related to cognitive reserve, including multilingual experiences, standardized clinical and experimental cognitive assessments suitable for multilingual patients diagnosed with the above progressive neurological diseases, as well as thorough neuroimaging testing batteries. This protocol enables systematic investigation across linguistic and cultural contexts, facilitating cross-laboratory data pooling to advance understanding of multilingualism’s neuroprotective potential in aging and disease. Its purpose is to spearhead an open-ended project which will keep adding to an increasing dataset of multilingual patients internationally; crucially, it sets a new standard in how to gather evidence investigating multilingualism as a factor contributing to cognitive reserve.