Maria Cristina Caselli is responsible for the LaND research line.His research focuses on the early development of language and on the relationships between language, communication and cognition in typical populations (including bilingual children) and atypical (deaf children, with Down syndrome, with language disorders). Particular attention is given to the similarities and differences in the acquisition of spoken language and the Sign Language. More recently, he began studying the effect of cochlear implantation on the language skills of deaf children, taking into consideration the role of neural plasticity and previous auditory and linguistic experiences. Maria Cristina Caselli is the Italian representative of "MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories" (in Italy known as the "Primo Vocabolario del Bambino"), a tool developed in more than 60 different languages and widely used for the assessment of communication and language skills in early life. It is also widely used for the early identification of children at risk for communicative and linguistic development or with delays or language disorders. Over time it has established fruitful collaborations with colleagues from universities and national and international research centers, and with child neuropsychiatrists, developmental psychologists and therapists, in particular speech therapists. She is the author and co-author of many books and evaluation tools, and of numerous national and international scientific publications, in various fields, including: developmental psychology, developmental neuropsychology, psycholinguistics.
