Overview
Researchers working within this theme use a variety of behavioural, neuropsychological, and cognitive neuroscience methods to study the interaction of language and cognition across the lifespan. Research projects include both basic level and transactional research with monolingual and bilingual infants, children, and adults. Current topics of research include phonological and lexical development, word recognition, semantic processing, literacy, treatment programmes for aphasia in bilinguals, cognitive advantages to bilingualism, cross-language priming and interference in bilinguals.
Aphasia
Strokes often lead to language disturbances which impair the ability to communicate effectively and function in society. Many people in the UK and worldwide are bilingual, and brain damage usually affects both languages. However there are few well-controlled studies to guide the treatment of bilingual language disorders. This project focuses on "acquired dysgraphia", a disorder of written language that takes different forms. It will take place in North Wales where many people are bilingual.
Bilingualism
Researchers use a variety of behavioural, neuropsychological, and cognitive neuroscience methods to study the interaction of learning two or more languages across the lifespan. Current research projects on Welsh/English bilinguals include: translanguaging in the classroom, literacy development, bilingual norms for language development from infants to young adults, how bilingualism affects the organisation of brain activity for language in toddlers, categorisation and meaning, cognitive advantages to bilingualism, treatment of spelling disorders in aphasia, protective effects of bilingualism on ageing and dementia. Other studies within the school interact with local councils and business in to examine unconscious attitudes towards work and employment in Wales.
Language and cognitive development
Bangor has a number of developmental labs using cognitive neuroscience and behavioural techniques to study language and cognitive development in monolingual and bilingual infants, children, adolescents and adults. Topics include speech perception, word recognition, semantic priming, categorisation, imitation, grammatical processing, and the interaction between language and non-language domains such as memory and emotion. Other work has been conducted within a behaviour analysis framework including a new account of how early words are learned and how they drive categorisation of formally unrelated stimuli. Experimental tests of this theory have challenged existing behavioural theories of language and 'stimulus equivalence'.
Dyslexia
58³Ô¹Ï has a long-standing tradition of research into dyslexia. The Centre was the first unit of its kind to be established combining research into dyslexia with clinical work, based on groundwork by the acclaimed Professor Tim Miles OBE who began work on Dyslexia in the 1960s. We continue to operate a Dyslexia Unit and have a number of integrative cross-group projects on the theme of language deficits. The Miles Dyslexia Centre is a self-financing, nationally and internationally renowned, specialised Centre at 58³Ô¹Ï.
Language and Emotion
Researchers at Bangor are exploring how language interacts with socio-emotional processes across the lifespan. Some of the research questions addressed include: Is emotion processed differently in a bilingual's first versus second language? Does the brain process emotion and meaning in the same way? How does social development influence language development? Are positive and negative emotion words processed differently in people with and without anxiety and depression? How do attitudes and cultural identity interact with language perception? A number of different labs use a variety of cognitive neuroscience and behavioural methods to explore these questions in monolingual and bilingual infants, children, and adults.