@article{Tsimpli2021,

title = {Bilingualism effects on the cognitive flexibility of autistic children: Evidence from verbal dual-task paradigms},

author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Eleni Peristeri and Margreet Vogelzang},

doi = {10.1162/nol_a_00055},

year  = {2021},

date = {2021-09-10},

urldate = {2021-09-10},

journal = {Neurobiology of Language},

pages = {1-73},

abstract = {The deficit in cognitive flexibility, i.e. the ability to adapt cognitive behavior to changing contexts, is one of the most prominent characteristics of autistic individuals. Inflexibility may manifest in restricted interests and increased susceptibility to the effects of misinformation either through inefficient inhibition of non-target information or deficient recall of correct information. Bilingualism has been shown to enhance executive functions in both typically-developing children and autistic children, yet, the effect of bilingualism on cognitive flexibility in autism remains underexplored. In this study, we used verbal dual-tasks to compare cognitive flexibility across 50 monolingual autistic and 50 bilingual autistic children, and 50 monolingual and 50 bilingual typically-developing children. The children were also administered language ability tests and a nonverbal global-local cognitive flexibility task, in order to investigate whether performance in the dual-tasks would be modulated by the children’s language and executive function skills. The bilingual autistic children outperformed their monolingual autistic peers in the dual tasks. The strength of the bilingualism effect, however, was modulated by the type of language processing that interfered with the target information in each dual-task, which suggests that the bilingual autistic children calibrated their processing resources and efficiently adapted them to the changing demands of the dual-task only to the extent that the task did not exceed their language abilities. Bilingual autistic children relied on their executive functions rather than on their language abilities while performing in the dual-tasks. The overall results show that bilingualism compensates for the reduced cognitive flexibility in autism.

},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Tsimpli2021d,

title = {The cognitive benefits of bilingualism in autism spectrum disorder: Is theory of mind boosted and by which underlying factors?},

author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Eleni Peristeri and Eleni Baldimtsi and Margreet Vogelzang and Stephanie Durrleman},

doi = {10.1002/aur.2542},

year  = {2021},

date = {2021-05-19},

urldate = {2021-05-19},

journal = {Autism Research},

volume = {14},

number = {3},

abstract = {This study examined whether bilingualism boosts Theory of Mind as measured by a non-verbal false belief (FB) task in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and how this potential boost may stem from improvements in a variety of other domains, namely executive functions (EFs), language, metalinguistic awareness skills, as well as autism severity. One hundred and three children with ASD (7- to 15-year-olds) (43 bilingual and 60 age- and IQ-matched monolingual children) were tested on a nonverbal task of attentional switching, working memory and updating task, and an online, low-verbal first-order FB task. Results showed a clear FB benefit for bilingual children with ASD as compared with their monolingual peers. There were also boosts in EF, however, there is no evidence that these EF boosts drove the FB advantage. Enhanced FB was not explained either by language, metalinguistic skills, or lower autism severity. While the results do not conclusively settle the debate on what triggers the ToM advantage in bilingual children with ASD, the empirical picture of the current study suggests that the ToM component of FB understanding in bilingual children with ASD is enhanced by the bilingual experience per se. Lay Summary The current study aimed to determine if and how bilingualism may improve the ability to understand others' beliefs in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We assessed their belief reasoning alongside a series of other skills hypothesized to be beneficial for such reasoning, namely understanding, producing, and thinking about language, recalling and switching between information, and the severity of their autistic symptoms. The overall findings highlight advantages for bilingual children with ASD over their monolingual peers for grasping beliefs, thus suggesting that pursuing bilingualism may be beneficial for cognition in ASD. Other boosts were also associated with bilingualism, such as recalling and switching between information, but these boosts were not directly related to belief understanding, highlighting the beneficial role of bilingualism per se.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Tsimpli2021e,

title = {Cognitive and Affective Aspects of Theory of Mind in Greek-Speaking Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders},

author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Eleni Baldimtsi and Ageliki Nicolopoulou},

doi = {10.1007/s10803-020-04595-0},

year  = {2021},

date = {2021-04-01},

urldate = {2021-04-01},

journal = {Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders},

volume = {51},

number = {4},

pages = {1142-1156},

abstract = {Substantial research indicates that individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have difficulties with Theory of Mind (ToM) abilities, but rarely have studies used a comprehensive battery to measure both the cognitive and affective aspects of ToM. The present study tested this ability in 24 Greek-speaking children with ASD (ages 7–14), and their performance was compared to 24 age-, gender- and language- matched typically developing controls. Results showed that ASD children’s performance was selectively impaired in both ToM aspects, supporting the distinction between ToM components. This is the first study of ToM abilities among Greek- speaking children with ASD, and the findings confirm that children with ASD are experiencing difficulties with socio-emotional understanding across languages and cultures.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Tsimpli2021f,

title = {Measuring the multilingual reality: lessons from classrooms in Delhi and Hyderabad},

author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Amy Lightfoot and Anusha Balasubramanian and Jeanine Treffers-Daller and Lina Mukhopadhyay},

doi = {10.1080/13670050.2021.1899123},

year  = {2021},

date = {2021-03-16},

urldate = {2021-03-16},

journal = {International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism},

pages = {1-21},

abstract = {India's linguistic diversity is reflected in classrooms across the country, where multiple languages are used by teachers and learners to negotiate meaning and instruction-a multilingual, multicultural student body is the norm, whether in urban or rural contexts. This study documents teaching practices in English language and maths lessons in Delhi and Hyderabad, with a specific focus on language use. The findings from 104 classroom observations allow us to profile multilingual practices used in schools with different official mediums of instruction. Results reveal a predominant use of 'language mixing' in the classroom, in both English-and regional language-medium of instruction contexts-especially in English subject lessons. Maths lessons in regional-medium schools did not involve as much language mixing by the teachers but this was still a strong feature for learners. The data also shows differences between language use particularly when comparing English-medium schools in each city. Specifically, lessons in Delhi were characterised by absolutely no occurrences of English used on its own by the teachers (as recorded during five-minute intervals), compared to significantly greater use of English alone in Hyderabad English-medium and Telugu-medium schools. Delhi teachers appear to use a greater amount of language mixing during each lesson.

},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Tsimpli2021h,

title = {Bilingual acquisition of reference: The role of language experience, executive functions and cross-linguistic effects},

author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Jacopo Torregrossa and Maria Andreou and Chris Bongartz},

doi = {10.1017/S1366728920000826},

year  = {2021},

date = {2021-02-10},

urldate = {2021-02-10},

journal = {Bilingualism: Language and Cognition},

volume = {24},

number = {4},

pages = {1-13},

abstract = {The present study aims to understand which factors contribute to different patterns of use of referring expressions by bilingual children, by considering the triangulation between language experience and proficiency, executive functions and cross-linguistic effects. We analyze reference use in Greek in the context of a narrative elicitation task as performed by 125 children of different language combinations, including Greek–Albanian, Greek–English and Greek–German. We calculate, for each child, an index of language experience that combines a proficiency measure with background questionnaire information. After identifying the occurrences of underinformative (underspecified) and overinformative (overspecified) referring expressions in the production of each child, we investigate to what extent each pattern of reference use is affected by language experience, cross-linguistic effects and executive functions. The study aims to shed some new light on the nature of overspecification and underspecification in bilingual reference production and, more in general, to model variation in reference use among bilingual children.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Tsimpli2021j,

title = {Cognitive Mechanisms of Monolingual and Bilingual Children in Monoliterate Educational Settings: Evidence From Sentence Repetition},

author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Maria Andreou and Elvira Masoura and Eleni Agathopoulou},

doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2020.613992},

year  = {2021},

date = {2021-01-20},

urldate = {2021-01-20},

journal = {Frontiers in Psychology},

volume = {11},

pages = {38-75},

abstract = {Sentence repetition (SR) tasks have been extensively employed to assess bilingual children's linguistic and cognitive resources. The present study examined whether monoliterate bilingual children differ from their monolingual (and monoliterate) peers in SR accuracy and cognitive tasks, and investigated links between vocabulary, updating, verbal and visuospatial working memory and SR performance in the same children. Participants were two groups of 35 children, 8-12 years of age: one group consisted of Albanian-Greek monoliterate bilingual children and the other of Greek monolingual children attending a monolingual-Greek educational setting. The findings demonstrate that the two groups performed similarly in the grammaticality scores of the SR. However, monolinguals outperformed the monoliterate bilinguals in SR accuracy, as well as in the visuospatial working memory and updating tasks. The findings did not indicate any bilingual advantage in cognitive performance. The results also demonstrate that updating and visuospatial working memory significantly predicted monolingual children's SR accuracy scores, whereas Greek vocabulary predicted the performance of our monoliterate bilingual children in the same task. We attribute this outcome to the fact that monoliterate bilingual children do not rely on their fluid cognitive resources to perform the task, but instead rely on language proficiency (indicated by expressive vocabulary) while performing the SR.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Tsimpli2020,

title = {Theory of Mind, Executive Functions, and Syntax in Bilingual Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder},

author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Maria Andreou and Stephanie Durrleman and Eleni Peristeri},

doi = {10.3390/languages5040067},

year  = {2020},

date = {2020-11-25},

urldate = {2020-11-25},

journal = {Languages},

volume = {5},

number = {4},

pages = {67},

abstract = {Impairments in Theory of Mind (ToM) are a core feature of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). ToM may be enhanced by various factors, including bilingualism, executive functions (EF), and complex syntax. This work investigates the language-cognition interface in ASD by exploring whether ToM can be enhanced by bilingualism, whether such ToM boosts would be due to EF or syntax, and whether routes to mentalizing would differ between bilinguals and monolinguals on the spectrum. Twenty-seven monolingual Greek-speaking and twenty-nine bilingual Albanian-Greek children with ASD were tested on ToM reasoning in verbal and low-verbal ToM tasks, an executive function 2-back task, and a sentence repetition task. Results revealed that bilingual children with ASD performed better than monolinguals with ASD in the low-verbal ToM and the 2-back tasks. In the sentence repetition task, bilinguals scored higher than monolinguals in complex sentences, and specifically in adverbials and relatives. Regarding the relations between ToM, EF, and sentence repetition, the monolingual group’s performance in the verbal ToM tasks was associated with complement syntax, whereas, for the bilingual children with ASD, performance in both verbal and low-verbal ToM tasks was associated with EF and adverbial clause repetition. The overall pattern of results suggests that mentalizing may follow distinct pathways across the two groups.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Tsimpli2020d,

title = {The Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives: Greek},

author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Maria Andreou and Eleni Peristeri},

doi = {10.21248/zaspil.64.2020.562},

year  = {2020},

date = {2020-09-10},

urldate = {2020-09-10},

journal = {ZAS Papers in Linguistics},

volume = {64},

abstract = {This paper presents an overview of the adaptation of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives in Greek, focusing on its use in Greek academic and diagnostic settings. A summary of the properties of the Greek language and the concomitant challenges these language-specific properties posed to MAIN adaptation are presented along with a summary of published studies with monolingual Greek-speaking children and bilingual children with Greek as L2, with and without Developmental Language Disorder.

},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Tsimpli2020e,

title = {Reference maintenance in the narratives of Albanian- Greek and Russian-Greek children with Developmental Language Disorder: A study on crosslinguistic effects},

author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Maria Andreou and Eleni Peristeri},

doi = {10.1177/0142723720948312},

year  = {2020},

date = {2020-08-17},

urldate = {2020-08-17},

journal = {First Language},

abstract = {Although a considerable number of studies have shown D(eterminer) elements, i.e. determiners and pronominal clitics, to be particularly vulnerable to impairment in monolingual children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), little is known about the use of appropriate or/and grammatically correct referring expressions in the children's narrative production. Grammars of languages that differ in the way they encode and realize their D system may be viewed as the ideal context to disentangle the contribution of language (L1) transfer and morpho-syntactic impairment to reference use in the L2. The aim of the current study is to examine L1 effects in the use of referring expressions of 5-to 11-year-old Albanian-Greek and Russian-Greek children with DLD, along with typically developing (TD) bilingual groups speaking the same language pairs when maintaining reference to characters in their narratives. The three languages differ in their D elements, since Albanian and Greek have morphologically rich D systems in contrast to Russian, which lacks a definiteness distinction. Children produced oral 2 First Language 00(0) narratives in Greek by using the Greek versions of two stories (Cat and Dog) which have been designed within the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN) tool of the COST Action IS0804. Results show that the groups did not differ in referential appropriateness. Regarding grammatical correctness, both groups with DLD produced more ungrammatical forms than TD children, while Russian-Greek children with DLD produced more ungrammatical article-less NPs than the other groups. The overall results reflect the joint contribution of language impairment and L1-specific typological properties in the definite forms used for character maintenance by bilingual children with DLD.

},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Tsimpli2020g,

title = {Categorical and Dimensional Diagnoses of Dyslexia: Are They Compatible?},

author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Luca Cilibrasi},

doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02171},

year  = {2020},

date = {2020-08-01},

urldate = {2020-08-01},

journal = {Frontiers in Psychology},

volume = {11},

pages = {21-71},

abstract = {Dyslexia is often assessed using categorical diagnoses, and subtypes of dyslexia are also recognized in a categorical fashion. Children may meet the criteria for dyslexia, and they may more specifically meet the criteria for a subtype of it, and thus get a diagnosis. This approach to diagnosis clashes with the actual distribution of reading performance in children (which is normal and continuous), and it has received criticism. This article offers a conceptual framework for conciliating these two positions. In short, the proposal is to use a set of multicomponent continuous assessments of reading, rather than thresholds. The proposal is explained using original data obtained from a sample of 30 children (age 7 to 11), tested in the United Kingdom. Using an assessment based on categorical-thresholds, only five children in our sample qualify for extra assistance, and only one may get a diagnosis of dyslexia, while with the mixed system proposed, a few additional children in the gray area would receive attention. This approach would not discard previous categorical approaches such as those distinguishing between surface and phonological dyslexia, but it would rather see these subtypes of dyslexia as the instance of a lower score on the continuum obtained on a single component of the multicomponent assessment.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Tsimpli2020h,

title = {Anaphora resolution and word-order across adulthood: Ageing effects on online listening comprehension},

author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Georgia Fotiadou and Ana I. Pérez Muñoz

},

doi = {10.5334/gjgl.997},

year  = {2020},

date = {2020-07-20},

urldate = {2020-07-20},

journal = {Glossa a Journal of General Linguistics},

volume = {5},

number = {1},

abstract = {In this visual-world paradigm we investigated the processing and interpretation of two overt subject anaphoric expressions in Greek, a null-subject language with a relatively free word-order, in relation to specific linguistic properties and whether these differ across adulthood. Specifically, we explored whether changes in anaphoric type ('o ídhios' vs. 'aftós') and syntactic complexity (SVO vs. OVS word-orders) had similar effects in how reference was processed and finally resolved by young and elderly adults. We analysed (a) fixation duration in subject and object antecedent pictures to examine online processing and (b) offline responses in comprehension questions to investigate final interpretation, i.e., ambiguity resolution. Our offline results revealed that pronominal resolution patterned across age groups: A clear subject preference of 'o ídhios' (‘the same’) was drawn from results irrespective of the word-order used, suggesting that this expression is preferentially linked to an element in prior discourse that has a parallel subject grammatical role, due to its focus feature (though OVS boosted the less preferred object readings). 'Aftós' (‘he’), a pronoun previously suggested sensitive to topic-shift, was overall proved ambiguous for both young and elderly adults. An age effect was qualified by significant differences in online processing of both subject expressions, as evidenced by fixation on both antecedent pictures. Interestingly, syntactic complexity (OVS structures) interacted with age in the case of 'o ídhios', raising fixation in subject antecedents among young, compared to the elderly adults. Age, but not linguistic manipulation, modulated processing of the anaphoric pronoun 'aftós' and of object antecedent pictures overall.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{nokey,

title = {The impact of bilingualism on the narrative ability and the executive functions of children with autism spectrum disorders},

author = {Ianthi Tsimpli},

doi = {10.1016/j.jcomdis.2020.105999},

year  = {2020},

date = {2020-05-01},

journal = {Journal of Communication Disorders},

volume = {85},

number = {3},

pages = {105999},

abstract = {While there is ample evidence that monolingual children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) face difficulties with narrative story-telling and executive functions (EF), there is considerable uncertainty about how bilingualism impacts these skills in autism. The current study explores the effect of bilingualism on the narrative and EF skills of forty 7-to-12-year-old bilingual and monolingual children with ASD, as well as forty age-matched bilingual and monolingual children of typical development (TD). Narrative production data were elicited using the Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument (ENNI; Schneider et al., 2005), which was developed to measure narrative production at a microstructural and macrostructural level. The same children were administered two EF tasks, namely, a global-local visual attention task and a 2-back working memory task. In story-telling, bilingual children with ASD achieved higher scores than monolingual children with ASD on story structure complexity and use of adverbial clauses, and they tended to use significantly fewer ambiguous referential forms than their monolingual peers with ASD. In the global-local task, bilingual children with ASD were faster and more accurate in global trials than monolingual children with ASD, who tended to be more susceptible to interference from locally presented information than the other experimental groups. Higher accuracy and faster response times were also observed for bilingual children with ASD in the 2-back task. Further correlation analyses between the story-telling and EF tasks revealed that bilingual children with ASD drew on a broader range of EF in narrative production than their monolingual peers. The overall findings reveal that bilingual children with ASD outperformed their monolingual peers with ASD in both the microstructure and macrostructure of their narrative production, as well as in their visual attention and working memory skills.

},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Tsimpli2020k,

title = {The impact of bilingualism on the narrative ability and the executive functions of children with autism spectrum disorders},

author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Eleni Peristeri and Eleni Baldimtsi and Maria Andreou},

doi = {10.1016/j.jcomdis.2020.105999},

year  = {2020},

date = {2020-05-01},

urldate = {2020-05-01},

journal = {Journal of Communication Disorders},

volume = {85},

number = {3},

pages = {105999},

abstract = {While there is ample evidence that monolingual children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) face difficulties with narrative story-telling and executive functions (EF), there is considerable uncertainty about how bilingualism impacts these skills in autism. The current study explores the effect of bilingualism on the narrative and EF skills of forty 7-to-12-year-old bilingual and monolingual children with ASD, as well as forty age-matched bilingual and monolingual children of typical development (TD). Narrative production data were elicited using the Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument (ENNI; Schneider et al., 2005), which was developed to measure narrative production at a microstructural and macrostructural level. The same children were administered two EF tasks, namely, a global-local visual attention task and a 2-back working memory task. In story-telling, bilingual children with ASD achieved higher scores than monolingual children with ASD on story structure complexity and use of adverbial clauses, and they tended to use significantly fewer ambiguous referential forms than their monolingual peers with ASD. In the global-local task, bilingual children with ASD were faster and more accurate in global trials than monolingual children with ASD, who tended to be more susceptible to interference from locally presented information than the other experimental groups. Higher accuracy and faster response times were also observed for bilingual children with ASD in the 2-back task. Further correlation analyses between the story-telling and EF tasks revealed that bilingual children with ASD drew on a broader range of EF in narrative production than their monolingual peers. The overall findings reveal that bilingual children with ASD outperformed their monolingual peers with ASD in both the microstructure and macrostructure of their narrative production, as well as in their visual attention and working memory skills.

},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Tsimpli2020n,

title = {Practically Selected Papers},

author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Maria Kaltsa and Eleni Agathopoulou},

year  = {2020},

date = {2020-03-31},

urldate = {2020-03-31},

abstract = {Research findings on the role of home language practices in bilingual families suggest a positive effect of the extensive use of the minority language at home in the development of that language (De Houwer 2007), along with a strong input quantity correlation to vocabulary development in particular (Cobo-Lewis et al. 2002). Moreover, parental socioeconomic status (SES) appears to contribute significantly both to L1 and L2 (Calvo & Bialystok 2014) and interacts with literacy development in both languages (Lindholm-Leary 2014). The present study examines how bilingualism, home language practices in the preschool age and L1 and L2 current input affect vocabulary development in Albanian-Greek bilingual children. To this aim, 79 bilingual children, aged 8 to 10 years-old were administered two tasks: (a) a Greek expressive vocabulary task (Vogindroukas et al. 2009), and (b) an Albanian expressive vocabulary task (Kapia & Kananaj 2013). Background information was collected on home language practices, current oral use of L1 and L2, past and current literacy practices with regard to each language, hours of instruction in each language and parental SES information with the use of questionnaires administered both to parents/guardians of the bilingual children and to the children themselves (Mattheoudakis et al. 2016). The data analysis showed that (a) L1 instruction positively affects L2 vocabulary of bilingual children who live in the L2 context, (b) SES (as indicated by maternal education level) directly affects literacy practices and (c) bilingual educational contexts drive language growth.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Tsimpli2020p,

title = {Linguistic Diversity, Multilingualism, and Cognitive Skills: A Study of Disadvantaged Children in India},

author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Margreet Vogelzang and Anusha Balasubramanian and Minati Panda and Abhigna Reddy and Suvarna Alladi and Theodoros Marinis},

doi = {10.3390/languages5010010},

year  = {2020},

date = {2020-03-01},

urldate = {2020-03-01},

journal = {Languages},

volume = {5},

number = {1},

pages = {10},

abstract = {Multilingualism and linguistic diversity are the norm in India. Although studies have shown a relation between bilingualism and cognitive gains, linguistic diversity has as of yet been ignored as a potential factor affecting cognitive skills. This study aims to fill this gap by examining how cognitive skills - as measured by the n-back and Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices tasks - are affected by multilingualism and/or sociolinguistic diversity in a large cohort of socioeconomically disadvantaged primary school children in two urban sites of India, Delhi and Hyderabad. We present a questionnaire estimating sociolinguistic diversity, and show that this measure assesses a distinct construct as compared to a child’s multilingualism. Children were classified as growing up monolingually or bilingually depending on whether they were growing up with one or more languages in the home. Regarding cognitive performance, bilinguals were found to outperform monolinguals on the n-back task as well as on the Raven's task. In addition, a socially and linguistically diverse environment seems to enhance cognitive performance for children who are not multilingual themselves. Finally, several contextual factors, such as city were found to influence cognitive performance. Overall, this shows that cognitive tasks are prone to contextual effects and that bilingualism and linguistic diversity can enhance cognitive performance of children in disadvantaged contexts.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Tsimpli2020r,

title = {Multimodal semantic revision during inferential processing: The role of inhibitory control in text and picture comprehension},

author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Ana I. Pérez Muñoz and Elaine Schmidt and Zoe Kourtzi},

doi = {10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2019.107313},

year  = {2020},

date = {2020-01-03},

urldate = {2020-01-03},

journal = {Neuropsychologia},

abstract = {Although language comprehension usually requires multimodal information, no study to date has investigated how comprehenders deal with the revision of a text’s interpretation when different modalities are involved. Twenty-four young adults listened to a story prompting an inference (e.g., polar bear), and then saw a picture that was either consistent (polar bear) or inconsistent but still plausible (penguin). Larger negativity (N400) in the inconsistent picture indicated successful inferential monitoring. Subsequently, a sentence carried the disambiguating word which was either expected (“bear”) or unexpected (“penguin”) in relation to the auditory-verbal information. Larger negativity in the unexpected word coming from the consistent picture suggested that comprehenders had difficulties selecting the unexpected concept when previous information was contradictory. More importantly, this effect was modulated by inhibitory control, where a higher resistance to distractor interference (flanker task) was associated with a better ability to suppress pictorial information, therefore preventing semantic competition. Similarly, accuracy measured in a final comprehension question demonstrated that higher inhibitory control was related to a more efficient ability to revise the situation model across modalities. Our findings speak to a relationship between story comprehension and mental flexibility during multimodal processing.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Tsimpli2019b,

title = {Prosody facilitates memory recall in l1 but not in l2 in highly proficient listeners},

author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Elaine Schmidt and Ana Pérez and Luca Cilibrasi},

doi = {10.1017/S0272263119000433},

year  = {2019},

date = {2019-08-27},

urldate = {2019-08-27},

journal = {Studies in Second Language Acquisition},

volume = {42},

number = {1},

pages = {1-16},

abstract = {Prosody is crucial for language comprehension because it highlights underlying structures. This study explores whether prosody facilitates memory recall to the same extent in L1 and L2, and whether memory recall is poorer in L2 or whether language-specific differences can mitigate L2 processing difficulties. Nineteen Greek learners of English, and a monolingual English baseline, repeated three-digit chunks with and without prosodic cues in L1 and L2. Prosody was a major facilitator of memory recall only in L1 despite the high proficiency of learners. This indicates that L2 mastery of prosody perception is hard to attain, mirroring production studies. However, when prosodic boundary cues were absent, memory recall in L2 was comparable to L1. This demonstrates that language-specific differences can attenuate more general processing difficulties in L2. This study is the first to demonstrate differences in prosodic processing in L1 and L2 resulting in poorer memory recall in L2.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Tsimpli2019c,

title = {Reading as a Predictor of Complex Syntax. The Case of Relative Clauses},

author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Luca Cilibrasi and Flavia Adani},

doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01450},

year  = {2019},

date = {2019-07-10},

urldate = {2019-07-10},

journal = {Frontiers in Psychology},

volume = {10},

abstract = {Background The current study aims at better characterizing the role of reading skills as a predictor of comprehension of relative clauses. Well-established cross-linguistic evidence shows that children are more accurate in the comprehension of subject-extracted relative clauses in comparison to the object-extracted counterpart. Children with reading difficulties are known to perform less accurately on object relatives at the group level compared to typically developing children. Given that children’s performance on reading tasks is shown to shape as a continuum, in the current study we attempted to use reading skills as a continuous variable to predict performance on relative clauses.Methods We examined the comprehension of relative clauses in a group of 30 English children (7–11 years) with varying levels of reading skills. Reading skills varied on a large spectrum, from poor readers to very skilled readers, as assessed by the YARC standardized test. The experimental task consisted of a picture-matching task. Children were presented with subject and object relative clauses and they were asked to choose one picture - out of four - that would best represent the sentence they heard. At the same time, we manipulated whether the subject and object nouns were either matching (both singular or both plural) or mismatching (one singular, the other plural) in number.ResultsOur analysis of accuracy shows that subject relatives were comprehended more accurately overall than object relatives, that responses to sentences with noun phrases mismatching in number were more accurate overall than the ones with matching noun phrases and that performance improved as a function of reading skills. Within the match subset, while the difference in accuracy between subject and object relatives is large in poor readers, the difference is reduced with better reading skills, almost disappearing in very skilled readers.DiscussionBeside replicating the well-established findings on the subject-object asymmetry, number facilitation in the comprehension of relative clauses, and a better overall performance by skilled readers, these results indicate that strong reading skills may determine a reduction of the processing difficulty associated with the hardest object relative clause condition (i.e., match), causing a reduction of the subject-object asymmetry.},

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}

@article{Tsimpli2019d,

title = {Effects of executive attention on sentence processing in aphasia},

author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Eleni Peristeri and Efthimios Dardiotis and Kyrana Tsapkini},

doi = {10.1080/02687038.2019.1622647},

year  = {2019},

date = {2019-05-31},

urldate = {2019-05-31},

journal = {Aphasiology},

volume = {34},

number = {8},

pages = {943-969},

abstract = {Background: In the recent years there has been increasing interest in the effects of attentional control on syntactic comprehension, as measured in garden path sentence resolution. Persons with aphasia (PWA) experience greater penalties in garden path sentences compared to language-unimpaired adults but the origin of this deficit remains a controversial issue. One of the possible deficits has been claimed to be disambiguation of lexical cues in the sentence. However, in languages such as English with little morphological variation this connection is hard to establish. To test this hypothesis we used garden path sentences in a morphologically rich language, Greek, where morphological cues may resolve garden path at the lexical level. We further tested whether domain-general attentional control abilities and in particular shifts in attentional control predict garden path resolution in PWA and age- and education-matched controls. Aims: This study aimed to determine whether PWA were able to integrate disambiguating morphological (Case) cues while processing garden path sentences. In addition, we tested whether domain-general attentional control and in particular attentional shift from global to local and local to global information (as defined by) correlates directly with garden path resolution in PWA and healthy controls. Methods & Procedures: Fifteen participants with non-fluent/agrammatic aphasia along with fifteen age- and education-matched language-unimpaired adults performed an online self-paced reading and grammaticality judgment task that included object/subject ambiguous sentences. Syntactic ambiguity was created by the optional transitivity of verbs, while the garden path effect was resolved by morphological Case. The individuals’ executive attention skills were tested through an online non-verbal global-local attention shifting task that measured costs stemming from shifting attention from the global to the local level, and vice versa. Outcomes & Results: PWA were slower and more erroneous than controls in integrating Case cues to disambiguate garden path sentences as manifested in the self-paced reading and grammaticality judgment task. In the global local task, PWA exhibited greater global-to-local (vs. local-to-global) attention shifting costs, while controls did not exhibit dissociation. In the regression analysis, garden path resolution in PWA was significantly predicted by global-to-local attention shifting costs, while controls’ garden path resolution was significantly predicted by local-to-global attention shift costs. Conclusions: The present study showed for the first time that morphological cues can shed light in sentence comprehension deficits exhibited by PWA. Furthermore, domain-general attentional control abilities were significantly associated with sentence comprehension abilities in both healthy controls and PWA.},

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}

@article{Tsimpli2019f,

title = {Bilingualism effects in children with Developmental Language Disorder: Metalinguistic awareness, Executive functions and False belief reasoning},

author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Eleni Peristeri and Eleni Baldimtsi and Stephanie Durrleman},

year  = {2019},

date = {2019-04-22},

urldate = {2019-04-22},

abstract = {Bilingualism effects in children with Specific Language Impairment: metalinguistic awareness, executive functions and false-belief reasoning Introduction. Bilingualism in typically-developing (TD) children has been linked to enhanced Theory of Mind (ToM) performance, specifically for false-belief attribution [1,2]. This ToM advantage has been related to improved executive functions (EFs) in bilinguals [2,3], such as inhibition or set-shifting skills [4]. The ToM advantage in bilinguals has also been attributed to enhanced metalinguistic awareness [5], e.g. bilinguals’ ability to reflect on meaning and form. Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI), aside from their formal language delays, exhibit difficulties in all the aforementioned areas, namely metalinguistic awareness [6], EFs [7] (although see [8]), and ToM [9]. Delays in ToM may nevertheless be attenuated in tasks which minimize verbal demands [10]. The goals of the present study are to investigate possible effects of bilingualism (a) on verbal and non-verbal ToM and (b) on thelinks between ToM, EF and metalinguistic awareness in children with SLI. Method. Participants included 16 bilingual children with SLI (henceforth, SLIbi) (Mean age: 10;4), and age-matched monolingual children with SLI (SLImono),monolingual and bilingual TD children (TDmono, TDbi). Children were given language proficiency measures(vocabulary, sentence repetition, syntactic comprehension), a word definition task as a metalinguistic awareness measure (WISC-III; [11]), a non-verbal EF battery (mixed global-local attention shifting & inhibition task, 2-back working memory task), and a ToM battery including tasks of varying complexity, in both verbal (first-order Unexpected Content & Transfer, second-order adapted from [12]) and non-verbal forms (adapted from [13]). Results. SLImono and SLIbi children scored lower than TD children in all language measures (p<.001). SLImono children’s shifting cost in the local trials of the global-local task was larger than the rest of the groups (p<.001). In the 2-back task, SLImono children were less accurate than TDmono children (p=.05). In the verbal ToM tasks, SLImono children scored lower than SLIbi and TDmono groups in second-order ToM tasks (p<.05). In the nonverbal, first-order ToM task, SLIbi children were faster and more accurate than SLImono children on false-belief attribution (p<.02). Correlations between task performances revealed that first- and second-order verbal ToM correlated with first-order non-verbal ToM performance only for SLIbi children (p<.001). Also, metalinguistic awareness for the SLImono group correlated with Unexpected Content and Unexpected Transfer (p=.001), i.e. first order ToM, but not with second-order ToM, while for the SLIbi group (and TD children) metalinguistic performance only correlated with second-order ToM (p<.001). Finally, non-verbal ToM performance for SLImono children correlated with both EF tasks (p<.05), while non-verbal ToM performance correlated with the 2-back task for the rest of the groups (p<.04) (see Table 1). Discussion. SLIbi and TDbi children had higher accuracy scores than SLImono children in the second-order verbal ToM and the non-verbal ToM task, as well as a lower shifting cost in the global-local task, thus, implying bilingual advantages at both the verbal and the non-verbal level of ToM and EF. Finally, findings show reliable interactions between false-belief performance and working memory for SLIbi, TDmono and TDbi children, in line with previous studies on the interaction between ToM and working memory in typical development [14]. References [1] Bialystok, E., & Senman, L. (2004). Executive processes in appearance-reality tasks: The role of inhibition of attention and symbolic representation. Child Development, 75, 562–579. [2] Goetz, P. J. (2003). The effects of bilingualism on Theory of Mind development. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 6, 1-15. [3] Kovács, Á. M. (2009). Early bilingualism enhances mechanisms of false-belief reasoning. Developmental Science, 12, 48-54. [4] Bialystok, E. (2010). Bilingualism. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 1, 559-572. [5] Diaz, V., & Farrar, M. J. (2017). The missing explanation of the false-belief advantage in bilingual children: a longitudinal study. Developmental Science, doi: 10.1111/desc.12594. [6] Smith-Lock, K. M. (1995). Morphological usage and awareness in children with and without specific language impairment. Annals of Dyslexia, 45 (1), 161-185. [7] Iluz-Cohen, P., and Armon-Lotem, S. (2013). Language proficiency and executive control in bilingual children. Bilingualism, 16, 884-899. [8] Torrens, V. (2018). Language properties and executive functions in the identification of SLI children in monolingual and bilingual populations, Language Acquisition, 25 (1), 1-4. [9] Nilsson, K., & de Lopez, K. (2016). Theory of mind in children with specific language impairment: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Child Development, 87 (1), 143-153. [10] Durrleman, S., Burnel, M., & Reboul, A. (2017). Theory of mind in SLI revisited: links with syntax, comparisons with ASD. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 52 (6), 816-830. [11] Wechsler, D. (1992). WISC-III: Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition: Manual (Australian adaptation). San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corporation. [12] Astington, J.W., Pelletier, J., & Homer, B. (2002). Theory of mind and epistemological development: The relation between children's second-order false-belief understanding and their ability to reason about evidence. New Ideas in Psychology, 20(2), 131–144. [13] Forgeot d’Arc, B., and Ramus, F. (2011). Belief attribution despite verbal interference. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64 (5), 975-990. [14] Slade, L., & Ruffman, T. (2005). How language does (and does not) relate to theory-of- mind: A longitudinal study of syntax, semantics, working memory and false belief. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 23, 117-141.

},

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@article{Tsimpli2019h,

title = {Multilingualism and multiliteracy in primary education in India: A discussion of some methodological challenges of an interdisciplinary research project},

author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Lina Mukhopadhyay and Jeanine Treffers-Daller and Suvarna Alladi and Theodoros Marinis and Minati Panda and Anusha Balasubramanian and Pallawi Sinha},

doi = {10.1177/1745499919828908},

year  = {2019},

date = {2019-03-01},

urldate = {2019-03-01},

journal = {Research in Comparative and International Education},

volume = {14},

number = {1},

pages = {54-76},

abstract = {In the Indian context, concerns have been raised for many years about the learning outcomes of primary school children. The complexity of the issue makes it difficult to advise stakeholders on what needs to be done to improve learning in primary schools in India. As it has been shown that low socio-economic status is one of the key factors that negatively affect learning outcomes, the focus of the Multilila project (‘Multilingualism and multiliteracy: Raising learning outcomes in challenging contexts in primary schools across India’) is on educational achievement among children of low socio-economic status. In following the development of language, literacy, maths and cognitive abilities of primary school children over two years we hope to throw new light on why multilingual children in India do not always experience the cognitive advantages associated with multilingualism in other contexts. This paper focuses on some of the methodological challenges faced by this project. After explaining the rationale for the study, we sketch the contribution this project can make to the discussion about cognitive advantages of bilingualism. We then focus on the Indian context before presenting the methodology of the project (design, participants, instruments and procedure). Finally, we summarize the key challenges for the project and possible solutions to those challenges, and present an outlook towards the future.},

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}

@article{Tsimpli2019i,

title = {Object Omission in Contact: Object Clitics and Definite Articles in the West Thracian Greek (Evros) Dialect},

author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Nikolaos Lavidas},

doi = {10.1163/19552629-01201006},

year  = {2019},

date = {2019-02-27},

urldate = {2019-02-27},

journal = {Journal of Language Contact},

volume = {12},

number = {1},

pages = {141-190},

abstract = {We examine spontaneous production data from the dialect of Modern West Thracian Greek ( mwtg ) (the local dialect of Evros) with regard to a hypothesis of syntactic borrowing of verbal transitivity. We argue that mwtg allows omission of the direct object with specific reference, in contrast to Standard Modern Greek ( smg ) and other Modern Greek ( mg ) dialects (spoken in Greece), but similar to Turkish. Object omission in mwtg is possible only in contexts where smg and other mg dialects show obligatory use of the 3rd-person clitic. We argue that syntactic borrowing in the case of language contact follows the transfer with second language learners: the relevant elements that host uninterpretable features are used optionally. Moreover, the definite article, in contrast to the indefinite article, is also affected by language contact. The 3rd-person clitic and the definite article are affected by contact as uninterpretable clusters of features. We claim that interpretability plays a significant role in transitivity in cases of language contact.},

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tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Tsimpli2019j,

title = {Input and literacy effects in simultaneous and sequential bilinguals: The performance of Albanian–Greek-speaking children in sentence repetition},

author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Maria Kaltsa and Alexandra Prentza},

doi = {10.1177/1367006918819867},

isbn = {136700691881986},

year  = {2019},

date = {2019-01-23},

urldate = {2019-01-23},

journal = {nternational Journal of Bilingualism},

volume = {24},

number = {2},

abstract = {Aim The present study examines input and literacy effects in simultaneous and sequential bilinguals with the aim of (a) investigating the differences between bilingual and monolingual populations and (b) disentangling the individual contribution of different factors in bilingual syntactic abilities. Methodology A sentence repetition task (SRT) in Greek with eight structures (Subject Verb Object [SVO], negative clauses, clitic structures, complement clauses, coordinated sentences, adverbial clauses, wh-questions and relative clauses) was employed. All bilinguals additionally participated in a standardized expressive vocabulary task in Greek to measure their lexical ability. Data Sixty 8–10-year-old children (20 monolingual, 20 simultaneous and 20 late sequential bilinguals) were tested. Findings The analysis showed that (a) monolinguals outperform sequential bilinguals in sentence repetition, (b) clitic structures are highly problematic for all participants, (c) vocabulary and syntactic skills are closely related for simultaneous but not for sequential bilinguals, (d) home language practices in the early years affect SRT performance and (e) sequential bilinguals benefit from literacy practices that support syntactic skills in the language tested. Overall, we found that the effect of input overrides the effect of a traditionally categorical factor in bilingualism: age of onset (AoO) of exposure to L2. Originality The contribution of this study includes (a) the examination of syntactic abilities in bilinguals in connection with language input early in life and at the time of testing, (b) the non-pervasive role of age of exposure to the L2 in SRT performance and (c) the role of literacy measures as key factors affecting syntactic skills in bilinguals. Implications Quality of input and literacy in particular have been shown to affect bilingual syntactic skills, suggesting that enhancing literacy exposure as a language policy for bilinguals has a significantly positive impact on language development.

},

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tppubtype = {article}

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@article{Tsimpli2019l,

title = {Bilingual reference production: A cognitive-computational account},

author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Jacopo Torregrossa and Christiane Bongartz},

doi = {10.1075/lab.17026.tor},

year  = {2019},

date = {2019-01-12},

urldate = {2019-01-12},

journal = {Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism},

volume = {9},

number = {2},

abstract = {We investigate reference production in bilingual children. Based on Kibrik (2011), we analyze the production of referring expressions in discourse in terms of activation of a referent. We propose a novel approach, which calculates activation by taking into account different activation-lending factors and their respective weight. This allows us to compare the activation encoded by referring expressions across languages and groups of speakers, and to run correlational analyses with the speakers’ cognitive profiles. In particular, the study addresses the correlation between activation and lexical processing among bilinguals, based on the distribution of referring expressions in narratives by 20 German-Greek bilingual children, compared to their monolingual peers. We found that bilingual pronouns correspond to a lower activation than monolingual ones. Speed of lexical retrieval is a predictor of the bilingual performance. Our model of analysis accounts for how reference production varies across individuals and which cognitive mechanisms underlie this variation.},

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pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Tsimpli2019k,

title = {Effects of executive attention on garden path processing in Broca’s aphasia},

author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Eleni Peristeri and Efthimios Dardiotis and Kyrana Tsapkini},

doi = {10.3389/conf.fnhum.2019.01.00006},

year  = {2019},

date = {2019-01-01},

urldate = {2019-01-01},

journal = {Frontiers in Human Neuroscience},

volume = {13},

abstract = {In the recent years there has been increasing interest in the effects of attentional control on syntactic comprehension, as measured in garden path sentence resolution. Persons with aphasia (PWA) experience greater penalties in garden path sentences compared to language-unimpaired adults but the origin of this deficit remains a controversial issue. One of the possible deficits has been claimed to be disambiguation of lexical cues in the sentence. However, in languages such as English with little morphological variation this connection is hard to establish. To test this hypothesis we used garden path sentences in a morphologically rich language, Greek, where morphological cues may resolve garden path at the lexical level. We further tested whether domain-general attentional control abilities and in particular shifts in attentional control predict garden path resolution in PWA and age.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Tsimpli2018,

title = {Morphophonology and compensation in specific language impairment: Evidence from Standard Modern Greek and Cypriot Greek Received 05 Jun 2018, Accepted 25 Jul 2018, Published online: 13 Aug 2018 Download citation https://doi.org/10.1080/02699206.2018.1505956},

author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Maria Mastropavlou and Kakia Petinou and Anastasios M. Georgiou},

doi = {10.1080/02699206.2018.1505956},

year  = {2018},

date = {2018-08-13},

urldate = {2018-08-13},

journal = {Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics},

volume = {34},

number = {3},

pages = {291-291},

abstract = {Abstract The current study investigates the role of the morphophonological realisation of grammatical features as a compensatory mechanism for morphosyntactic deficits in specific language impairment (SLI). The phenomenon examined is past tense formation in Standard Modern Greek (SMG) and Cypriot Greek (CG) as it manifests a distinction in morphophonological salience realisation in the two linguistic via differential use of a stress shift and stressed syllabic augment [é] required for past tense rule formation. Participants were pre-schoolers with typical language development (TD) and children with SLI. Subjects produced real verb (RV) and pseudo-verb (PV) in sentence completion tasks. Results indicated that morphophonological properties of past tense formation affected SLI but not TD performance. We attribute the results to the difference in the status of the augment in each variety and the effects it has on its realisation at the phonetic interface. Furthermore, verb contractibility appeared to pose particular difficulties in the performance of all groups.},

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pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Tsimpli2018c,

title = {Thank you to reviewers (2015–2018)},

author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Chung hye Han and Björn Köhnlein and Waltraud Paul and Johan Rooryck and Guido Vanden Wyngaerd},

doi = {10.5334/gjgl.665},

year  = {2018},

date = {2018-04-05},

urldate = {2018-04-05},

journal = {Journal of general linguistics},

volume = {3},

number = {1},

abstract = {It has now been two years since Glossa went live on 1 April 2016. The anniversary of the journal seemed like a good moment to look back. Since the transition from Lingua to Glossa in the Fall of 2015, the editors of Glossa have sent out roughly 3350 invitations to review. These invitations have resulted in 2220 completed reviews by a total of 1168 individual reviewers.

The editors of Glossa would like to take this opportunity to thank all reviewers since the Fall of 2015 for the effort and expertise that they have contributed. Without these reviews, it is simply impossible to maintain the high standards of peer-reviewed journals. We fully realize that reviewing is insufficiently rewarded in academia, and therefore decided to publish a complete list of our reviewers below. We apologize if your name does not appear in this list while you did review for Glossa: the transition period was quite hectic. Do let us know and we will rectify the list.},

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pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Tsimpli2017,

title = {Crosslinguistic influence is not necessarily Attrition},

author = {Ianthi Tsimpli},

doi = {10.1075/lab.00021.tsi},

year  = {2017},

date = {2017-12-31},

urldate = {2017-12-31},

journal = {Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism},

volume = {7},

number = {6},

pages = {759-762},

abstract = {In their keynote article, Schmid & Köpke (2017; henceforth S&K) convincingly summarize that bilingualism is different from monolingualism: In the same individual, two languages in regular contact are bound to influence one another in more than one way and do so right from the onset of this contact. As soon as L2 development begins, early signs of this contact are found, the implication being that neither higher proficiency nor extensive exposure to the L2 are prerequisites. But, prerequisites for what? Unlike what S&K proposed, a distinction between L1 attrition and crosslinguistic influence (CLI) seems to be in order. Bilingualism is language contact which triggers CLI and this should be, by definition, bi-directional, ie, from L1 to L2 and from L2 to L1. How compatible is CLI with the definition of L1 attrition in S&K’s article?},

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tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Tsimpli2017b,

title = {Syntactic and Story Structure Complexity in the Narratives of High- and Low-Language Ability Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder},

author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Eleni Peristeri and Maria Andreou},

doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02027},

year  = {2017},

date = {2017-11-20},

urldate = {2017-11-20},

journal = {Frontiers in Psychology},

volume = {20},

abstract = {Although language impairment is commonly associated with the autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the Diagnostic Statistical Manual no longer includes language impairment as a necessary component of an ASD diagnosis (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). However, children with ASD and no comorbid intellectual disability struggle with some aspects of language whose precise nature is still outstanding. Narratives have been extensively used as a tool to examine lexical and syntactic abilities, as well as pragmatic skills in children with ASD. This study contributes to this literature by investigating the narrative skills of 30 Greek-speaking children with ASD and normal non-verbal IQ, 16 with language skills in the upper end of the normal range (ASD-HL), and 14 in the lower end of the normal range (ASD-LL). The control group consisted of 15 age-matched typically-developing (TD) children. Narrative performance was measured in terms of both microstructural and macrostructural properties. Microstructural properties included lexical and syntactic measures of complexity such as subordinate vs. coordinate clauses and types of subordinate clauses. Macrostructure was measured in terms of the diversity in the use of internal state terms (ISTs) and story structure complexity, i.e., children's ability to produce important units of information that involve the setting, characters, events, and outcomes of the story, as well as the characters' thoughts and feelings. The findings demonstrate that high language ability and syntactic complexity pattern together in ASD children's narrative performance and that language ability compensates for autistic children's pragmatic deficit associated with the production of Theory of Mind-related ISTs. Nevertheless, both groups of children with ASD (high and low language ability) scored lower than the TD controls in the production of Theory of Mind-unrelated ISTs, modifier clauses and story structure complexity.

},

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tppubtype = {article}

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@article{Tsimpli2017c,

title = {Syntactic and story structure complexity in the narratives of high-and low-language ability children with autism spectrum disorder},

author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Eleni Peristeri and Maria Andreou},

doi = {10.17863/CAM.22205},

year  = {2017},

date = {2017-11-20},

urldate = {2017-11-20},

journal = {Frontiers in psychology},

volume = {8},

pages = {2027},

abstract = {Although language impairment is commonly associated with the autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the Diagnostic Statistical Manual no longer includes language impairment as a necessary component of an ASD diagnosis (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). However, children with ASD and no comorbid intellectual disability struggle with some aspects of language whose precise nature is still outstanding. Narratives have been extensively used as a tool to examine lexical and syntactic abilities, as well as pragmatic skills in children with ASD. This study contributes to this literature by investigating the narrative skills of 30 Greek-speaking children with ASD and normal non-verbal IQ, 16 with language skills in the upper end of the normal range (ASD-HL), and 14 in the lower end of the normal range (ASD-LL). The control group consisted of 15 age-matched typically-developing (TD) children. Narrative performance was measured in terms of both microstructural and macrostructural properties. Microstructural properties included lexical and syntactic measures of complexity such as subordinate vs. coordinate clauses and types of subordinate clauses. Macrostructure was measured in terms of the diversity in the use of internal state terms (ISTs) and story structure complexity, i.e., children's ability to produce important units of information that involve the setting, characters, events, and outcomes of the story, as well as the characters' thoughts and feelings. The findings demonstrate that high language ability and syntactic complexity pattern together in ASD children's narrative performance and that language ability compensates for autistic children's pragmatic deficit associated with the production of Theory of Mind-related ISTs. Nevertheless, both groups of children with ASD (high and low language ability) scored lower than the TD controls in the production of Theory of Mind-unrelated ISTs, modifier clauses and story structure complexity.},

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pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Tsimpli2017e,

title = {Language external and language internal factors in the acquisition of gender: the case of Albanian-Greek and English-Greek bilingual children},

author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Maria Kaltsa and Alexandra Prentza and Despina Papadopoulou},

doi = {10.17863/CAM.26014},

year  = {2017},

date = {2017-10-20},

urldate = {2017-10-20},

journal = {International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism},

volume = {23},

number = {8},

pages = {981-1002},

abstract = {2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group The aim of this experimental study is to examine the development of gender assignment and gender agreement in bilingual Albanian-Greek and English-Greek children as well as the exploitation of gender cues on the noun ending in real and pseudo-nouns. Four gender tasks were designed, two targeting gender assignment (determiner + noun production) and two gender agreement (predicate adjective production). Performance is investigated in relation to the role of (positive) L1 transfer (Albanian vs. English), the role of the bilingual’s vocabulary knowledge in Greek as well the role of input factors including the monolingual/bilingual school contexts and the role of parental education as a proxy for socioeconomic status (SES). The results show a strong interaction between the bilinguals’ performance and their Greek vocabulary development and a negative link between gender accuracy and use of the other language.

},

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}