Juhayna Taha

8BBFD3D8-2138-4A92-8F7E-7F729CA337F4Juhayna Taha is a Research Fellow within the MultiMind network. She is currently working with Professor Maria Teresa Guasti to explore the potential of language processing, cognitive and motor rhythmic tasks for identifying dyslexia in monolingual and bilingual Italian-speaking children. She is also collaborating with the Psycholinguistics group at the University of Geneva to investigate the effects of rhythmic priming on the grammatical judgement in bilingual French-speaking children.

Juhayna holds a BA in Speech Therapy (Birzeit University, Palestine), MSc in Psycholinguistics (University of Edinburgh, Scotland), and a PhD in Clinical Language Sciences (University of Reading, England). In her PhD, she investigated the linguistic and cognitive profiles of Arabic-speaking children with Developmental Language Disorders.

Through conducting inter-disciplinary, cross-linguistic research, Juhayna aims to broaden the understanding of the nature of the mechanisms that underpin first and second language and reading development, and how these mechanisms are altered in dyslexia and language disorders. This will ultimately inform the development of relevant diagnostic approaches, tools and interventions.

Upcoming Events

September 17, 2024
  • BIL Seminar: Margreet Vogelzang September 17, 2024 @ 2:30 pm - 4:00 pm Aula 3143 U6 Bicocca

    Introducing the concept of (bilingual) reference profiles: A cluster-analysis approach

    Empirical studies on bilingual children’s reference production have often focussed on comparisons with monolingual peers. In this talk, I will introduce the concept of “reference profiles”: Speakers may exhibit similar or different behaviours in reference production, independently of whether they belong to a specific group (e.g., monolinguals or bilinguals) or whether their production adheres to some norm.
    As an empirical example, I will present data from thirty-seven Greek-Italian bilingual children (Mage = 9;4, range 7;10-11;6) who performed narrative retelling tasks in both of their languages, as well as vocabulary tasks and various cognitive tasks. The data show that the children had a good mastery of reference (i.e. appropriately using null pronouns, full pronouns, or full nouns) in both of their languages. Using cluster analyses, two distinct reference profiles were identified. Further investigation showed that these profiles differed in both their sustained attention and in the use of overspecified REs in contexts where reference to the same referent was maintained. These results are interpreted in light of current cognitive theories of (bilingual) reference processing and emphasise the potential of (reference) profiles for the study of other domains beyond bilingual reference production.

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