Online Symposium – Language Learning Through Communicative Interaction
(Virtually hosted by University of Edinburgh, 21-22nd October 2021)
We are excited to announce a free online symposium on October 21st and 22nd which brings together researchers with a common interest in language learning through communicative interaction in typical and autistic development to share research from a range of perspectives and discuss emerging themes. Substantial research suggests that language experience plays an important role in language learning, but how might this occur and to what extent might its influence depend on interaction?
The symposium includes a series of talks by experts in the field followed by a final roundtable discussion.
Confirmed speakers:
Dr Danielle Matthews, University of Sheffield
Dr Aparna Nadig, McGill University
Professor Liz Nilsen, University of Waterloo
Professor Courtenay Norbury, UCL
Professor Caroline Rowland, MPI
Dr Leone Buckle, University of Manchester
View abstracts here.
The symposium is supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council LEaD* and WeChat**projects. It will take place on Zoom (21st October 15:00-18:00 BST/10:00-13:00 EDT and 22nd October 14:30-17:30 BST/09:30-12:30 EDT). The outline programme is available here.
Please join us and contribute to the discussion! Registration is free of charge and access to the online talks is available by filling out the form at https://forms.office.com/r/Gt7Nwxxmeq. We look forward to seeing you.
With best wishes,
Holly Branigan, Laura Lindsay, Charlotte Wilks (University of Edinburgh)
Kate Messenger (University of Warwick)
Nicola Yuill (University of Sussex)
Leone Buckle (University of Manchester)
Zoe Hopkins (King’s College London)
*The LEaD project (https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/leadproject/) is investigating how language experience supports language development in typically developing children, and specifically how children's immediate experiences of syntax in interactive contexts lead to long-term learning of syntactic structures. The project examines how experience-based syntactic learning varies across structures, age and stage of language development; the timecourse of experience-based learning effects; and the extent to which learning generalises across linguistic and non-linguistic contexts.
**The WeChat project (http://wechat.org.uk) is investigating how typically developing and autistic children adapt their language use in response to their conversational partner’s language use (“conversational alignment”). Such alignment appears to be important for both effective communication and satisfying interactions. The project examines how and when alignment of words and grammar might occur; how its incidence might relate to audience design and social-affective goals; and whether autistic children show the same or different patterns of alignment during interaction as typically developing children.