Webinar: Language Deprivation

Presenter: Kate Rowley

Language Deprivation

This seminar will introduce the concept of ‘language deprivation’ and its prevalence in the deaf population. The impact of language deprivation on cognitive, socioemotional well-being and academic achievements will be explored. Tips on the prevention and reduction of language deprivation will be discussed.

Learning aims

–    To understand what language deprivation is
–    To be aware of the long-term effects of language deprivation
–    To learn ways to prevent and reduce language deprivation

Bio

Dr. Kate Rowley is a deaf researcher who specialises in the psycholinguistics of deaf people and sign languages. She is particularly interested in how deaf children develop language and literacy skills. Kate earned her PhD from University College London (UCL) in 2018, supervised by Professors Gabriella Vigliocco and Mairead MacSweeney. Her doctoral research investigated Visual Word Recognition in deaf readers, focussing on the interplay between orthographic, semantic and phonological information during word recognition and reading. Since 2007, she has worked on many different research projects relating to language development and specific language impairments, including the development of sign language assessment tools such as the BSL Sentence Repetition Task and the Receptive Skills Test, and a reading intervention plan for pre-school deaf and hearing children. She has also been involved in research investigating the BSL Corpus, the language attitudes of British Sign Language users, and the language and identity of young deaf people aged 16 to 19 years.  Kate is currently an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre (DCAL) at UCL.