Maria Vender
Biographic Data
| ID | 3531258 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Maria Vender |
| GIVEN NAMES | Maria |
| FAMILY NAME | Vender |
| SIGNATURE | VENDER M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Verona |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1985-9184 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 7 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
L2 learners take more time to catch the rhyme: An eye-tracking study on predictive processing
Aims and objectives: This study investigates the role of prediction in language comprehension for both native (L1) and non-native (L2) speakers of English, focusing on phonological and semantic cues. In addition, it examines whether higher proficiency in the L2 enhances predictive abilities. Methodology: Using the Visual World Paradigm, we explore how Italian learners of English (L2) employ semantic and phonological cues during sentence parsing a…
Topicality, accessibility, and causality in anaphora resolution: An eye-tracking study of null and overt pronouns in Italian
It has been argued that the distribution of pronominal forms in pro-drop languages is shaped by a complex interplay of syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic factors. Null pronouns are typically interpreted as co-referring with the most prominent antecedent, whereas overt pronouns often signal a topic shift, co-referring with less prominent antecedents. Although many frameworks have been proposed to explain the division of labor between null and over…
Metalinguistic awareness in L2 Italian children with a migrant background: A trade-off between cognitive advantages and syntactic vulnerabilities
Metalinguistic awareness is a domain where bilingual advantages have been reported, with bilinguals outperforming monolinguals in tasks that require separating syntactic form from semantic content, demonstrating higher selective attention, interference suppression, and inhibition skills ( Adesope et al., 2010 ). However, these cognitive advantages may be counterbalanced by weaknesses in specific linguistic domains, such as morphosyntactic process…
Bridging the Gap in Adult Dyslexia Research: Assessing the Efficacy of a Linguistic Intervention on Literacy Skills
While developmental dyslexia has been extensively studied in children, research on adults is still rather limited. This paper aims to bridge the gap in existing research by presenting the findings of a study that examined the reading and spelling skills of adults with dyslexia and assessed the effectiveness of a linguistic intervention designed to improve their literacy abilities. To address this issue, we first compared the profiles of 44 adults…
The Acquisition of Negation in Italian
The acquisition of negation in Child Italian has not yet been comprehensively addressed in the literature. This paper aims to provide a fine-grained picture of the acquisition process in this Romance language by considering production data and exploring three specific aspects of negation development: (a) the emergence and subsequent development of negators and negative constructions, (b) the acquisition of negative functions and their varying pro…
Object relatives with postverbal subject in Italian-speaking children and adults: The role of encyclopedic knowledge in detecting sentence ambiguity
Italian relative clauses like Il bambino che bacia la mamma ‘the child that kisses the mom’ are ambiguous between a subject reading and an object reading with postverbal subject. However, the latter is scarcely accessible for word order and theory-internal considerations. This study aims at investigating the role of semantic (im)plausibility in processing these ambiguous constructions. Italian children’s (7;01–10;00 years old) and adults’ (21;08–…
Inflectional morphology: Evidence for an advantage of bilingualism in dyslexia
It has been shown that morphological skills are particularly enhanced in bilingual children, whereas they are compromised in dyslexics. The aim of this work is that of investigating how bilingualism interacts with dyslexia in a task measuring the subject’s morphological abilities, to verify if the advantage typically found in bilingualism arises also in presence of a linguistic pathology such as dyslexia. We administered a task assessing the abil…
Phonological Awareness across Child Populations: How Bilingualism and Dyslexia Interact
Phonological awareness is a complex and multifaceted skill which plays an essential role in the development of an individual's language and literacy abilities. Phonological skills are indeed dramatically impaired in people with dyslexia, at any age and across languages, whereas their development in bilinguals is less clear. In addition, the interaction between bilingualism and dyslexia in this domain is still under-investigated. The aim of this p…
Scalar implicatures in Chinese children with reading difficulties
This study investigates the derivation of scalar implicatures in Chinese children with reading difficulties (RD). Twenty-four children with RD (mean age 9 years and 8 months), 20 age-matched typical readers (mean age 9 years and 10 months), 20 six-year-old children and 20 five-year-old children were tested with the comprehension of sentences with scalar items yixie ‘some’ and suoyou ‘all’. The pattern of children with RD was similar to that of si…
Clitic Production in Bilingual Children: When Exposure Matters
The aim of this work is to investigate how bilingual children perform with respect to monolingual children in a task eliciting direct object clitic pronouns in Italian. Clitic production is considered a good clinical marker for Italian monolingual children suffering from specific language impairment (SLI) (Bortolini et al. 2006). Moreover, this task is reported to be particularly challenging for early second language children (EL2), who are less …
Inflectional morphology and dyslexia: Italian children’s performance in a nonword pluralization task
The Acquisition of Negation in Italian
The acquisition of negation in Child Italian has not yet been comprehensively addressed in the literature. This paper aims to provide a fine-grained picture of the acquisition process in this Romance language by considering production data and exploring three specific aspects of negation development: (a) the emergence and subsequent development of negators and negative constructions, (b) the acquisition of negative functions and their varying pro…
Phonological Awareness across Child Populations: How Bilingualism and Dyslexia Interact
Phonological awareness is a complex and multifaceted skill which plays an essential role in the development of an individual's language and literacy abilities. Phonological skills are indeed dramatically impaired in people with dyslexia, at any age and across languages, whereas their development in bilinguals is less clear. In addition, the interaction between bilingualism and dyslexia in this domain is still under-investigated. The aim of this p…
Clitic Production in Bilingual Children: When Exposure Matters
The aim of this work is to investigate how bilingual children perform with respect to monolingual children in a task eliciting direct object clitic pronouns in Italian. Clitic production is considered a good clinical marker for Italian monolingual children suffering from specific language impairment (SLI) (Bortolini et al. 2006). Moreover, this task is reported to be particularly challenging for early second language children (EL2), who are less …
Inflectional morphology and dyslexia: Italian children’s performance in a nonword pluralization task
Clitic Production in Bilingual Children: When Exposure Matters
The aim of this work is to investigate how bilingual children perform with respect to monolingual children in a task eliciting direct object clitic pronouns in Italian. Clitic production is considered a good clinical marker for Italian monolingual children suffering from specific language impairment (SLI) (Bortolini et al. 2006). Moreover, this task is reported to be particularly challenging for early second language children (EL2), who are less …
Scalar implicatures in Chinese children with reading difficulties
This study investigates the derivation of scalar implicatures in Chinese children with reading difficulties (RD). Twenty-four children with RD (mean age 9 years and 8 months), 20 age-matched typical readers (mean age 9 years and 10 months), 20 six-year-old children and 20 five-year-old children were tested with the comprehension of sentences with scalar items yixie ‘some’ and suoyou ‘all’. The pattern of children with RD was similar to that of si…
Object relatives with postverbal subject in Italian-speaking children and adults: The role of encyclopedic knowledge in detecting sentence ambiguity
Italian relative clauses like Il bambino che bacia la mamma ‘the child that kisses the mom’ are ambiguous between a subject reading and an object reading with postverbal subject. However, the latter is scarcely accessible for word order and theory-internal considerations. This study aims at investigating the role of semantic (im)plausibility in processing these ambiguous constructions. Italian children’s (7;01–10;00 years old) and adults’ (21;08–…
Inflectional morphology: Evidence for an advantage of bilingualism in dyslexia
It has been shown that morphological skills are particularly enhanced in bilingual children, whereas they are compromised in dyslexics. The aim of this work is that of investigating how bilingualism interacts with dyslexia in a task measuring the subject’s morphological abilities, to verify if the advantage typically found in bilingualism arises also in presence of a linguistic pathology such as dyslexia. We administered a task assessing the abil…
Phonological Awareness across Child Populations: How Bilingualism and Dyslexia Interact
Phonological awareness is a complex and multifaceted skill which plays an essential role in the development of an individual's language and literacy abilities. Phonological skills are indeed dramatically impaired in people with dyslexia, at any age and across languages, whereas their development in bilinguals is less clear. In addition, the interaction between bilingualism and dyslexia in this domain is still under-investigated. The aim of this p…
The Acquisition of Negation in Italian
The acquisition of negation in Child Italian has not yet been comprehensively addressed in the literature. This paper aims to provide a fine-grained picture of the acquisition process in this Romance language by considering production data and exploring three specific aspects of negation development: (a) the emergence and subsequent development of negators and negative constructions, (b) the acquisition of negative functions and their varying pro…
Metalinguistic awareness in L2 Italian children with a migrant background: A trade-off between cognitive advantages and syntactic vulnerabilities
Metalinguistic awareness is a domain where bilingual advantages have been reported, with bilinguals outperforming monolinguals in tasks that require separating syntactic form from semantic content, demonstrating higher selective attention, interference suppression, and inhibition skills ( Adesope et al., 2010 ). However, these cognitive advantages may be counterbalanced by weaknesses in specific linguistic domains, such as morphosyntactic process…
Bridging the Gap in Adult Dyslexia Research: Assessing the Efficacy of a Linguistic Intervention on Literacy Skills
While developmental dyslexia has been extensively studied in children, research on adults is still rather limited. This paper aims to bridge the gap in existing research by presenting the findings of a study that examined the reading and spelling skills of adults with dyslexia and assessed the effectiveness of a linguistic intervention designed to improve their literacy abilities. To address this issue, we first compared the profiles of 44 adults…
L2 learners take more time to catch the rhyme: An eye-tracking study on predictive processing
Aims and objectives: This study investigates the role of prediction in language comprehension for both native (L1) and non-native (L2) speakers of English, focusing on phonological and semantic cues. In addition, it examines whether higher proficiency in the L2 enhances predictive abilities. Methodology: Using the Visual World Paradigm, we explore how Italian learners of English (L2) employ semantic and phonological cues during sentence parsing a…
Topicality, accessibility, and causality in anaphora resolution: An eye-tracking study of null and overt pronouns in Italian
It has been argued that the distribution of pronominal forms in pro-drop languages is shaped by a complex interplay of syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic factors. Null pronouns are typically interpreted as co-referring with the most prominent antecedent, whereas overt pronouns often signal a topic shift, co-referring with less prominent antecedents. Although many frameworks have been proposed to explain the division of labor between null and over…
Linguistics (10 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Reading and Literacy Development (9 works) · Language Development and Disorders (8 works) · Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism (6 works) · Cognitive psychology (5 works) · Developmental psychology (5 works) · Cognition (4 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Dyslexia (4 works)