Numerous studies proved that living in a multilingual environment soundly enhances the social and cognitive skills of people, making them more careful and able to solve problems in conflict situations.
The AThEME programme - Advancing The European Multilingual Experience - results from the desire to study the importance of multilingualism in Europe, from different perspectives. The programme involves 17 universities of 8 countries, which will cooperate for the next 5 years. The participating Italian universities are Trento and Verona.
The research work will deal with different topics: the role of parents for second-generation migrants, the cognitive aspects and the social impact of multilingualism, considering also the value of minor languages in the areas where different languages intertwine.
Multilingualism is a wide spread phenomenon in Europe, yet few studies have been carried out on some aspects, which seem to have significant economic and social impacts. Multilingualism not only improves the capacity to find a job and move, but it also constitutes a fundamental identity element of a community and, probably, a crucial factor in the cognitive development of people.
The work carried out at UniTrento will focus on three aspects. At the Department of Humanities, Ermenegildo Bidese and Patrizia Cordin, in cooperation with tah group of researchers of Verona, will deal with the topic of the contact among different languages in the same area, paying particular attention to their mutual impact. The linguistic variety of Trentino, with the presence of Germanic languages, like Cimbro, and romance languages, like Italian, makes Trentino particularly suitable for this type of studies.
Further, in the Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science (DiPSCo), Francesco Vespignani in cooperation with the Unviersity of Verona, will focus on links between bilingualism and some language pathologies, like dyslexia. The study aims at analyzing this topic to avoid that the natural delays in the language acquisition by bilingual children are mistakenly taken for language disorders.
Finally, the Mind/Brain Centre (CIMeC) research group will care for the dissemination materials, so that the research results are transmitted to the highest number of beneficiaries.
More information is available in the Press release, in the Downloads section.