Linguistics brownbag series: Transdisciplinary connections

Informal conversation exploring some of the common interests and goals, and possible transdisciplinary projects between linguistics and medicine.

Beverly Collisson, PhD is an Associate Professor (Research) of Pediatrics at Cumming School of Medicine and a Child Health & Wellness Researcher at Alberta Children's Hospital Research Institute, Owerko Centre. Her research focuses on the mechanisms underlying language impairment, late talking toddlers, and clinical management of children with primary language impairment. Her primary lines of investigation include, 1) risk factors, clinical markers, and long term outcomes of toddlers who are late to talk, and 2) the relationships between typical and atypical language learning and cognitive abilities such as those of perception, attention, and memory. Given the heterogeneity of linguistic and nonlinguistic strengths and weaknesses in children with primary language impairment, I am interested in understanding what cognitive or linguistic abilities predict those individual differences. A better understanding of the causal mechanisms that contribute to language learning impairment provides the foundation for the development of more detailed and focused interventions for these children.

Dimitrios Skordos, PhD is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at the School of Languages, Linguistics, Literatures and Cultures. He is also the co-director of the University of Calgary Developmental Psycholinguistics Lab. He investigates how children learn the meanings of words and phrases in their language and how they use their language-learning abilities to think about and understand context and the intentions of others. Recent projects include the acquisition of quantifiers and logical connectives as well as the acquisition of spatial terms and motion events and how that interacts with memory and non-linguistic cognition.