University of Cambridge

Ianthi Maria Tsimpli, Napoleon Katsos, Jenny Gibson

Tsimpli holds a Chair in English and Applied Linguistics. She has worked on monolingual and bilingual language development and language impairment in children and adults. Her work on autism focuses on a) the in-depth investigation of the case-study of the polyglot-savant, an individual with autism, mental retardation, poor memory and exceptional language learning skills, b) research on lexical, syntactic and narrative abilities of children with autism focusing on character reference and macrostructure, c) recent research on bilingualism and autism linking narrative skills and non-verbal cognitive control skills. Katsos is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics. He is interested in bilingualism in development disorders. Together with Jenny Gibson and Thomas Bak (Edinburgh), he is co-PI of the 6th Strand of Multilingualism: Empowering Individuals and Transforming Societies (£500K). Gibson is a Lecturer at the Faculty of Education. She is interested in the social and linguistic development of children with ASD and ADHD, as well as in play. Tsimpli’s team publishes in high-ranked journals such as Cognition, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, Language and Speech, and at Cambridge University Press.
Within the LACA collaboration Tsimpli’s lab members focuses on lexical, syntactic and narrative abilities. In particular, they investigate character reference and macrostructure, and the interplay between narrative skills and non-verbal cognitive control skills in mono- and bilingual children with autism.