Shenai Hu

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Shenai Hu is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Psychology, University of Milan-Bicocca. She earned her PhD in Linguistics in the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the University of Milan-Bicocca in 2014, and was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Philology, Literature and Linguistics, University of Verona in 2015.

Her research interests are in the areas of child language and language disorders with a special focus on bilingual children. She is particularly interested in how aspects of language form – syntax in particular – interact with other aspects of language development. She is presently interested in investigating reading disability and specific language impairment in Chinese-Italian bilingual children.

Upcoming Events

February 3, 2025
February 10, 2025
  • BIL Seminar "What does atypicality really mean? Language acquisition in autism" - Mikhail Kissine February 10, 2025 @ 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm U6, Sala Lauree, Terzo piano

    Abstract
    "Research on language in autism mostly explores delayed acquisition or atypical use, the reference point being language in non-autistic individuals. Such approaches focus on language disability, but somewhat downplay the acquisition routes that may be specific to autism. More specifically, typical language development is known to be intimately linked to socio-pragmatic, joint communicative experiences. Early-onset and life-long atypicality in the socio-communicative domain are core characteristics of autism, and likely explain why language onset is often significantly delayed in autistic children. However, it is also usually assumed that language trajectories in autism should be correlated with an increase of socio-communicative skills, such as joint attention. In this talk, I will review evidence that some autistic individuals may, in fact, acquire language in spite of persisting strong socio-communicative disabilities. I will also present new results that show that some autistic children are interested in language in and of itself, independently of its communicative function, and display enhanced sensitivity to the acoustic and structural properties of the linguistic input."

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