About the Project
The overarching aim of this Ph.D. project is to investigate figurative language comprehension in:
- children and adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
- children and adolescents with typical development (TD)
More specifically, the study will focus on the role of structural language skills in figurative language comprehension in these groups. The findings will contribute to the body of knowledge about language profile in ASD.
The project consists of three parts:
- Figurative language comprehension in ASD: a meta-analytic review
- A systematic review of figurative language comprehension assessment methods/tools in the context of ASD
- An empirical study of metaphor comprehension in monolingual children and adolescents with and without ASD
The relationship between structural language skills and figurative language will be explored by assessing language skills of the participants, using standardized language measures. The results obtained by the standardized measures will be compared to the parental reports, in order to find out whether there is any discrepancy between participants’ performance on the language measures and their functioning in everyday life.
Collaboration:
- Oslo University Hospital; Norwegian Centre of Expertise for Neurodevelopmental Disorders and Hypersomnias; Department of Rare Disabilities (NevSom)
- Language Acquisition and Language Processing Lab, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
- EU-project: Language and Perception (LanPercept)
- Researcher Ingrid Lossius Falkum, the Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature (CSMN)
- Professor Courtneay Norbury, Royal Holloway University of London, UK
Main supervisor: Associate Professor Kari-Anne Bottegaard Næss
Co-supervisor: Professor Mila Vulchanova and Reseacher (Ph.D.) Terje Nærland