Search
Shula Chiat

Professor Shula Chiat

Honorary Professor

School of Health & Psychological Sciences Department of Language and Communication Science

Contact details

Address

Professor Shula Chiat M121, Myddelton Street Building [M]
City, University of London
Northampton Square
London EC1V 0HB
United Kingdom

About

Overview

Shula is a psycholinguist specialising in typical and atypical language development. She has worked at City University London (1982-2000, 2006 to date) and at University College London (2000-2005).

After undergraduate studies in Linguistics and French at the London School of Economics, Shula undertook doctoral research on language acquisition at University College London focusing on the emergence of pronouns. Since then she has held appointments in speech and language therapy departments. Teaching on pre- and post-registration programmes has complemented her pursuit of research in developmental speech and language disorders and the evolution of her research activities. Her current collaborative research and research supervision focus on early assessment and identification of children at risk of language and social communication impairments, the development of cross-linguistic assessments, and evaluation of interventions motivated by theoretical and empirical evidence.

Qualifications

  • PhD, University College London, United Kingdom, 1975 – 1978
  • BA, University of London, United Kingdom, 1971 – 1975

Administrative roles

  • Programme Director: MSc Speech, Language and Communication Needs in Schools: Advanced Practice
  • Programme Director, MSc Advanced Practice in Health and Social Care: Speech, Language and Communication
  • Programme Director, MSc Joint Professional Practice: Language and Communication (run jointly with the Institute of Education)

Employment

  • Professor of Child Language, City University London, 2006 – present
  • Senior Lecturer/Reader in Developmental Language Processing, University College London, 2000 – 2005
  • Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Linguistics, City University London, 1982 – 2000
  • Research Officer, London School of Economics and Political Science, 1979 – 1980
  • Lecturer in Linguistics, School for the Study of Disorders of Human Communication, 1978 – 1982

Fellowships

  • Clinical Doctoral Research Fellow, National Institute of Health Research, Jun 2019 – present
  • Honorary Fellow, Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, 2007 – present
  • Fellow, Higher Education Academy, 2007 – present

Teaching

Modules taught:

- HCM005 Developmental Language Impairment

Research

Research Areas

- Language and speech development
- Developmental language and speech disorders
- Language assessment
- Linguistics and Psycholinguistics

Research Overview

Shula has initiated and collaborated in research on language acquisition, typical and atypical, for over 30 years. The broad question at the heart of her research is: how do children process the input they receive to establish the connections between forms and meanings in their language?

Shula's recent and current research activities address a range of issues within this broad domain:

Precursors and developmental trajectories of language skills: the role of phonological processing in the acquisition of words and syntax, and the role of affective and sociocognitive processing in the development of language and communication

Identification of early predictors of language and social communication disorders

Word, nonword and sentence repetition as measures of language skills

Cross-linguistic language assessment

Differentiation of language disorder and language disadvantage

Assessment and intervention of foundation skills for literacy in developing countries

Development and evaluation of interventions for sociocognitive and language impairments.

Shula is currently a member of a European-wide Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action 'Language Impairment in a Multilingual Society' (2009-2013), whose purpose is to design and evaluate language assessments for bilingual and minority language children. She is joint leader of one of the four Working Groups in this project with responsibility for work on nonword repetition tests. See http://www.bi-sli.org/

Shula is also interested in adult language processing, and in relations between models of adult and child language processing. She has in the past collaborated in and supervised research on psycholinguistic processing in acquired aphasia, and contributed to publications and debates which foster links between research with children and adults.

Grants

Literacy, foundation learning and assessment in developing countries (2013). Maggie Snowling (PI), Sonali Nag, Shula Chiat and Carole Torgersen. Funded by the Department for International Development.

Very early processing skills as predictors of language, social communication and literacy disorders in school-age children: A follow-up study (2010-11). Shula Chiat (PI) and Penny Roy. Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, Award Number R000-22-4093. https://www.city.ac.uk/health/research/centre-for-language-communication-sciences-research/veps-very-early-processing-skills

Is language as poor as it looks? Assessment of language potential in socially disadvantaged preschoolers (2009-10). Penny Roy (PI), Shula Chiat and Barbara Dodd. Funded by the Nuffield Foundation.

Very early processing skills as predictors of later language disorders (2002-6). Shula Chiat (PI) and Penny Roy. Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, Award Number R000-23-0019. https://www.city.ac.uk/health/research/centre-for-language-communication-sciences-research/veps-very-early-processing-skills

Evaluation of a novel technique for assessing speech discrimination (2004-6). Caroline Newton (PI), Shula Chiat and Jana Dankovicova. Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, Award Number R000-22-0748. http://www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/research/projects/SP-EYE/.

Collaborators

- Penny Roy, Tim Pring, Belinda Seeff-Gabriel, City University London
- Kamila Polisenska, University of Manchester
- Margaret Snowling, University of Oxford
- Sonali Nag, The Promise Foundation, Bangalore, India
- Theo Marinis, University of Reading
- Ewa Haman, University of Warsaw, Zofia Wodniecka, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Jakub Szewczyk, Max Plank Institute Nijmegen and Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
- Sharon Armon-Lotem, Bar Ilan University, Tel Aviv, Israel
- Sandrine Ferré
- Christophe dos Santos, Université
- François Rabelais de Tours, France
- Angela Grimm, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Research students

Ashwag Wallan

Thesis title: An investigation of sentence repetition as a measure of linguistic processing in both typically developing and language impaired Saudi children

Further information: (Co-supervisor: Penny Roy)

Mariam Khater

Thesis title: Early phonological skills as a predictor for receptive and expressive vocabulary size in Gulf Arabic speaking children

Further information: (Co-supervisor: Rachael-Anne Knight)

Ghada Najmaldeen

Thesis title: An investigation of socioeconomic effects on phonological awareness and lexical retrieval in Saudi children

Further information: (Co-supervisor: Penny Roy)

Aseel AlKadhi

Thesis title: An investigation of relations between sociocognitive skills, motor imitation and language abilities in young Saudi children

Further information: (Co-supevisor: Penny Roy)

Roberta Iacovelli

Thesis title: Gendered discourses in Speech and Language Therapy and Nursing

Further information: (First supervisor: Lia Litosseliti, second supervisor: Gill Craig)

Andrea Dohmen

Thesis title: An investigation of nonverbal imitation and language in children with specific language delay

Further information: PhD awarded 2012

Kamila Polišenská

Thesis title: The influence of linguistic structure on memory span: Repetition tasks as a measure of language ability

Further information: PhD awarded 2011

Marisa Silveira

Thesis title: Specific Language Impairment (SLI) revisited: evidence from a psycholinguistic investigation of grammatical gender abilities in Brazilian Portuguese-speaking children

Further information: PhD awarded 2010

Rachel Rees

Thesis title: Deaf children’s acquisition of speech skills: A psycholinguistic perspective through intervention

Further information: PhD awarded 2009

Belinda Seeff-Gabriel

Thesis title: An investigation of sentence-level abilities in children with different types of speech disorder

Further information: PhD awarded 2005

Ruth Herbert

Thesis title: Treatment of word-finding deficits in aphasia

Further information: PhD awarded 2002

Lindy Rosen

Thesis title: Reading words and reading minds: An investigation of linguistic processing in a group of hyperlexic subjects

Further information: PhD awarded 2000

Jo Robson

Thesis title: Neologism production in jargon aphasia

Further information: PhD awarded 1998

Jane Marshall

Thesis title: Sentence processing in aphasia: Single case treatment studies

Further information: PhD awarded 1994

Mary Evelyn

Thesis title: An investigation of verb processing in a child with specific language impairment

Further information: MPhil awarded 1996

Jane Stokes

Thesis title: Language development of Bengali children

Further information: MPhil awarded 1989

Publications

Publications by category

Books (5)

  • Joffe, V., Cruice, M. and Chiat, S. (2008). Language Disorders in Children and Adults. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-470-98790-2.
  • Black, M. and Chiat, S. (2003). Linguistics for Clinicians. A Hodder Arnold Publication. ISBN 978-0-340-75896-0.
  • Chiat, S. (2000). Understanding Children With Language Problems. Cambridge Univ Pr. ISBN 978-0-521-57474-7.
  • Chiat, S., Law, J. and Marshall, J. (1997). Language Disorders in Children and Adults. Wiley.
  • Black, M. and Chiat, S. Linguistics for Clinicians. Routledge.

Chapters (15)

  • Chiat, S. (2015). Non-word repetition. Assessing Multilingual Children: Disentangling Bilingualism from Language Impairment (pp. 125–150). ISBN 978-1-78309-311-3.
  • Chiat, S. (2015). 6. Non-Word Repetition. Assessing Multilingual Children (pp. 125–150). Multilingual Matters.
  • Roy, P. and Chiat, S. (2013). Teasing apart disadvantage from disorder The case of poor language. In Marshall, C.R. (Ed.), (pp. 125–150). PSYCHOLOGY PRESS.
  • Chiat, S., Armon-Lotem, S., Marinis, T., Polisenska, K., Roy, P. and Seeff-Gabriel, B. (2013). The potential of sentence imitation tasks for assessment of language abilities
    in sequential bilingual children.     In Mueller-Gathercole, V. (Ed.), Issues in the Assessment of Bilinguals (pp. 56–89). UK: Mulitlingual Matters. ISBN 978-1-78309-008-2.
  • Chiat, S., Armon-Lotem, S., Marinis, T., Polišenská, K., Roy, P. and Seeff-Gabriel, B. (2013). Assessment of Language Abilities in Sequential Bilingual Children: The Potential of Sentence Imitation Tasks. Issues in the Assessment of Bilinguals (pp. 56–89). ISBN 978-1-78309-008-2.
  • Chiat, S. (2009). Interfaces between cognition, semantics, and syntax. In Ball, M.J., Perkins, M.R., ller, N.M., Müller, N. and Howard, S. (Eds.), The Handbook of Clinical Linguistics Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-4443-0101-4.
  • Roy, P. and Chiat, S. (2008). Beyond outcomes: The importance of developmental pathways. In Joffe, V., Cruice, M. and Chiat, S. (Eds.), Language Disorders in Children and Adults Wiley. ISBN 978-0-470-98790-2.
  • Black, M. and Chiat, S. (2000). Putting thoughts into verbs: Developmental and acquired impairments. In Best, W., Bryan, K. and Maxim, J. (Eds.), Semantic processing: Theory and practice Wiley. ISBN 978-1-86156-185-5.
  • Chiat, S. (1994). From lexical access to lexical output: What is the problem for children with impaired phonology? In Yavaş, M.S. (Ed.), First and second language phonology Singular Publishing Group.
  • Chiat, S. (1994). A psycholinguistic approach. In Law, J. (Ed.), A handbook of approaches to intervention with preschool language impaired children AFASIC.
  • Chiat, S. (1988). Processing language breakdown. In Ball, M.J. (Ed.), Theoretical linguistics and disordered language Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-0-7099-5012-7.
  • Chiat, S. (1986). Personal pronoun systems. In Fletcher, P. and Garman, M. (Eds.), Language Acquisition Cambridge Univ Pr. ISBN 978-0-521-27780-8.
  • Chiat, S. (1986). Children's pronouns. In Wiesemann, U. (Ed.), Pronominal systems John Benjamins Pub Co.
  • Chiat, S. (1986). Personal pronouns. Language Acquisition (pp. 339–355). Cambridge University Press.
  • Hirson, A. and Chiat, S. Where the Intelligent Therapist Fears to Tread: Commentary on Guyardet al. Forums in Clinical Aphasiology (pp. 290–294). Whurr Publishers Ltd.

Conference papers and proceedings (2)

  • Armon-Lotem, S. and Chiat, S. (2012). How Do Sequential Bilingual Children Perform on Nonword Repetition Tasks?
  • Black, M. and Chiat, S. (2003). Noun-verb dissociations: A multi-faceted phenomenon.

Journal articles (90)

Report

Other

  • Seeff-Grabriel, B., Chiat, S. and Roy, P. The Early Repetition Battery.

Professional activities

Events/conferences (5)

  1. The power of elicited imitation: New insights from typically developing children, socially disadvantaged children, and children with SLI. Montreal (2011).
    Description: Symposium presented at the 12th Congress of the International Association for the Study of Child Language
  2. Elicited imitation: A window into typical and atypical language development. Montreal (2011).
    Description: Symposium presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development.
  3. Is language as poor as it looks? Assessment of language potential in socioeconomically disadvantaged preschoolers. London (2010).
    Description: The Child Language Seminar, City University London
  4. The effects of linguistic structure on short-term memory. London (2010).
    Description: The Child Language Seminar, City University London
  5. Investigating the relation between nonverbal imitative abilities and language skills in typical and language delayed children. London (2010).
    Description: The Child Language Seminar, City University London

Keynote lectures/speeches (4)

  1. The impact of socioeconomic disadvantage on young children's language. Warsaw (2012). SLI - Specific Language Impairment: Diagnosis, Prognosis, Intervention
  2. Do selective processing skills at 2-3 predict language, social communication and literacy at 10? Evidence from a follow-up study of clinically referred children. Dublin (2011). Biennial Conference 'Fresh Talk; Food for Thought'. Keynote address at Irish Association of Speech and Language Therapists.
  3. The Preschool Repetition Test: Evidence of typically developing and clinic samples in the UK. Newcastle, UK (2010). COST Action Language Impairment in a Multilingual Society: Linguistic Patterns and the Road to Assessment: Second MC & WGs Meeting.
  4. Early years language assessment/ERB. July 2011 Early Years Speech, Language and Communication Conference' organised by Pearson Assessment for 'Hello' Campaign.