en
Doctoral thesis
Open access
English

The language-cognition interface: Executive functions and syntax in atypical development

Defense date2020-08-28
Abstract

This dissertation reports the findings of five studies investigating he language-cognition interface in various clinical populations. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the topic, an integrative approach is applied to this research, claiming that both precise syntactic principles and more general cognitive mechanisms can account for phenomena observed in typical and atypical language development. Specifically, it is argued that the acquisition difficulties associated with certain structures in which an object has been moved are due to an interaction between formal syntactic properties, such as intervention effects within a featural Relativized Minimality framework, and processing limitations in attention and working memory. According to this line of reasoning, both domain-specific and domain-general skills have a role to play in the syntactic development of certain clinical populations, a hypothesis which is tested and validated via two cross-sectional studies, two working memory training studies and one priming study.

eng
Keywords
  • Attention
  • Working memory
  • Syntax
  • DLD
  • ADHD
  • SLD
  • French
Funding
  • Swiss National Science Foundation - 014_159606/3
Citation (ISO format)
STANFORD, Emily Nicole. The language-cognition interface: Executive functions and syntax in atypical development. 2020. doi: 10.13097/archive-ouverte/unige:144700
Main files (1)
Thesis
accessLevelPublic
Identifiers
409views
283downloads

Technical informations

Creation2020/10/23 07:41:00
First validation2020/10/23 07:41:00
Update time2024/03/21 08:37:24
Status update2024/03/21 08:37:24
Last indexation2024/03/21 08:37:26
All rights reserved by Archive ouverte UNIGE and the University of GenevaunigeBlack