Welcome to the LACA project’s website!

LACA (Language Abilities in Children with Autism) is a network funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for three years (2017-2020), and led by Prof. Jeannette Schaeffer from the University of Amsterdam. The network contains twelve European research labs investigating the nature and the development of language (in)abilities in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder across languages.  We examine all subdomains of language, including phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics, and their potential interaction with other cognitive functions.

In addition to organizing meetings with the network members, we also involve practitioners in workshops and research. Furthermore, we organize short-term research exchanges between the labs for students and staff. As one of our goals is to streamline methods between labs we are setting up a database for experimental materials to share.