Interdisciplinary Cooperations
Members of the HULC lab are currently engaged in the following interdisciplinary research programs:
Conceptualization in language production by patients diagnosed with schizophrenia
Cross-linguistic studies have shown that speakers of typologically different languages exhibit different patterns with regard to both event conceptualization, as well as the way spatial concepts are used to structure space. These differences affect the information selected as well as the perspective taken when describing situations. This project focuses on German and English native speakers diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Read more...Language and Cognition in Early Stages of Dementia
This project focuses on the question in how far linguistic and other cognitive processes are proportionally or disproportionally affected by age-related cognitive-decline.
Read more...What makes written language hard, what makes it easy to read and to understand?
Recently, easy-to-read German (Leichte Sprache) was developed as a means to make written texts more accessible to people who struggle with reading texts in standard German. However, it is far from clear whether the suggested linguistic means really promote readability and comprehensibility. Moreover, the suggested rules might be stated more precisely and additional factors might be considered. The aim of the current project is to test the effects of linguistic manipulations on the readability and intelligibility of words, sentences and texts for people with intellectual disabilities, for functionally illiterates, for beginning readers, and for readers of German as a second or foreign language.
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