Judith Rispens

Research interests

• Learnability of language
  
• Developmental language disorders
• Overlap between developmental dyslexia and SLI
• Language acquisition
• Acquisition of written language
• Acquired language disorders

Please find a copy of my CV here (latest update April 2011)

Link

Teaching

2011 / 2012:

Semester 1:

BA Inleiding Nederlandse Taalkunde

BA Methoden en Technieken

MA Language disorders and development II (with Jan de Jong)

MA Language assessment in clinical and non-clinical settings (with Jan de Jong)

Semester 2:

BA Inleiding Taalwetenschap

MA CSCA Hot topics in language and Cognition (with Hedde Zeijlstra)

2010 / 2011:

MA Language disorders and development II (with Jan de Jong)

MA Language assessment in clinical and non-clinical settings (with Jan de Jong)

BA Nederlandse Taalkunde: Een inleiding

2007 / 2008:

MA Speech and Language Development (with Jan de Jong and Paolo Escudero)

MA Language Disorders (part: acquired language disorders)

2008 / 2009:

MA: acquired language disorders

LOT summerschool: The language basis of literacy and its disorders. 15-19 June, Leiden.

2009 / 2010:

MA: acquired language disorders

Stage coordinator

Please contact me for information about a stage

Projects for students

Students who are interested in doing a project (stage or scriptie) in the area of language development and language disorders can contact me. My main research project is on lexical learning, morphological processing and processing of phonological and lexical representations in typically developing children and children with Specific Language Impairment and developmental dyslexia. Projects may involve setting up an experimental design (including ERP), assessing children and/or analysing the experimental data.

Research projects

Current research themes:

Perception and production of morphophonology

Lexical learning

Former research projects

Understanding the failure to repeat 'wafeisin': a study into the deficit underlying poor non-word repetition in SLI

( NWO VENI grant 2007-2011)

Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) have severe problems withrepeating non-words. However, significant controversy exists on the causal mechanisms of poor non-word repetition (NWR) in SLI and to date no systematic research has been carried out to resolve this issue. This failure to address the deficit underlying poor NWR limits not only our understanding of the processesinvolvedin SLI but consequently also that of effective interventions. Therefore, the main aim of thisproject isto investigate the level of breakdown responsible for deficient NWR in SLI. Poor NWR in SLI has been taken as evidence of limited capacity of the phonological short-term memory system. However,this projectproposes thatimpaired quality of phonological representationsis responsible for poor NWR in SLI. This interferes with theability to use existing phonological templates for the formation of novel phonological representations leading to a depressed NWR score. For normal language development it has been claimed that vocabulary expansion forces specification of phonological representations. As vocabulary development is often delayed in SLI, it is hypothesised that restricted vocabulary growth impairs refinement of phonological representations which in turn decreases NWR in SLI. This hypothesis, together with the idea that limited phonological short-term memoryis the source for poor NWR will be tested concurrently in a longitudinal study. In the present study, literacy skills will also be included as a variable as poor NWR has been demonstrated in dyslexia too. Recent research has indicated a considerable overlap between developmental dyslexia and SLI, troubling the interpretation of the present results. In order to control forthis potential confound, a subgroup of SLI children with concurrent dyslexic symptoms will be defined. This project will further our understanding of the NWR deficit in SLI. This will ultimately enhance insight into the deficit underlying SLI.

Previous projects

Post-doc at PI Research / VU (2004-2007)

* Investigating the contribution of morphological awareness to reading  and spelling. In collaboration with Catherine McBride-Chang (University of Hong Kong) and Pieter Reitsma (PI-research /VU)

* The influence of self-esteem on task behaviour in children with learning disabilities. In collaboration with Hedy Stegge, Jan Geelhoed, and Pieter Reitsma

* The role of semantics in learning to spell

Ph.D. Project.

Rijksuniversiteit Groningen 1999-2004
Syntactic and Phonological processing in developmental dyslexia

In this dissertation sensitivity to subject-verb agreement in spoken language was studied. Both electrophysiological studies (ERP study with adults) and behavioural measures (grammaticality tasks with preschool and school going children) were undertaken.Differences were observed both in children and adults. It was found that a decrease in sensitivity to subject-verb agreement was already present in the language of the preschoolers. A further study found that the children with developmental dyslexia displayed deficient phonological processing skills which may be the source of the problems with subject-verb agreement. A regression analysis showed that both the phonological problems and the morphosyntactic problems contributed to the word decoding deficit. Finally, a comparison between children with developmental dyslexia and children with SLI revealed that the two groups of children have problems in the same linguistic domains.

link to dissertation