”Using cognates to treat vocabulary deficits in multilingual specific language impairment’’

Tuesday 17th of March 2015

10:00 – 12:00 in Room CY013

Dr Maria Kambanaros

ABSTRACT
This talk will focus on the first research to report the effects of cognate therapy in the context of multilingual specific language impairment. The participant was an 8;6-year-old female with a severe naming deficit in her three languages (Bulgarian, English and Greek). She was trained over a one-month period on 20 non-identical triple cognates that shared meaning and phonological features in the proficient language only, English, using a picture-based naming task. Cross-linguistic transfer effects were evident during and after therapy, and were maintained one month post intervention. Both the native language (Bulgarian) and the dominant language (Greek) equally benefitted from the treatment of cognates in English. Generalization to non-treatment words was evident especially for English during and post intervention.

BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Kambanaros is a certified bilingual English–Greek Speech Pathologist with over 25 years of clinical experience and academic appointments in Greece and Cyprus. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, Cyprus University of Technology (CUT). She currently serves as Dean of the School of Health Sciences at CUT. Her research interests are related to acquired and developmental language impairments in bi-multilingual speakers, predominantly as related to the lexicon, with an emphasis on assessment and treatment outcomes. She is also the Clinical Assessor & Therapist for the Cyprus Acquisition Team.

Please register your participation with Sonia Mita at: [email protected]