The Graduate Center, CUNY
kantolovic@gradcenter.cuny.edu
Hello, I’m Katarina Antolovic, and I am a Ph.D. Candidate at the Graduate Center, CUNY in the Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences.
Our mental lexicon is characterized by a complex network of relationships between words. My work focuses on how different types of semantic relationships (i.e., semantic associations, categorically-related words, etc.) affect word retrieval.
My research uses an interdisciplinary framework drawn from psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology to examine sources of interference and facilitation during word retrieval in aging and bilingualism. Specifically, I am interested in how domain-general interference control abilities modulate the degree of semantic and cross-linguistic interference encountered during word retrieval.
Interference control reportedly declines with aging, potentially leaving older adults more susceptible to linguistic interference. My works aim to define the types of linguistic relationships that generate interference in the hopes that we can leverage this knowledge in aphasia treatment and in detecting signs of pathological aging (e.g., mild cognitive impairment).
My previous work has investigated how individual differences in linguistic experiences, such as informal language interpretation, influence language processing and representation. I have also been involved in a collaborative effort to improve methods of quantifying cross-linguistic overlap among cognates. I received my B.A. in Linguistics and B.S. in Communication Sciences & Disorders from the University of Texas at Austin.
2022 – 2024
Executed EEG data collection procedures as part of a clinical trial examining a non-invasive device-based treatment for individuals with dementia. Documented data collection sessions and encounters with clinical study participants. Tested participants enrolling at clinical sites within the Northeast regions and liaising with clinical site staff during the screening process. Responsible for EEG equipment maintenance and technical troubleshooting. On an as-needed basis, served as the EEG Supervisor, completing trial documentation and supervising a group of six EEG technicians.
2020 – 2021
Managed an NIH funded project investigating cross-linguistic generalization following aphasia treatment, which involved restructuring experimental protocols to transition to online-only assessment and treatment amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Supervised a team of 10-20 graduate and undergraduate students in carrying out scientific protocols, scoring data, and maintaining treatment records. Coordinated scheduling for clinicians and clients. Developed training sessions on topics ranging from research communication to data documentation.
2018 – 2020
Designed a scientific protocol to empirically measure word overlap between two languages. Coordinated the award of funds obtained from the Research Council of Norway in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Oslo. Collected data using EEG for studies examining language processing
Analysis
R, SPSS
Data Collection
E-Prime, Qualtrics, Gorilla
EEG
Brain Products Suite (Recorder, Analyzer), ANT Neuro (Waveguard), NetStation (EGI)
2024
Goral, M., Antolovic, K., Hejazi, Z., & Schulz, F. In Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics
When language abilities in aphasia are assessed in clinical and research settings, the standard practice is to examine each language of a multilingual person separately. But many multilingual individuals, with and without aphasia, mix their languages regularly when they communicate with other speakers who share their languages. We applied a novel approach to scoring language production of a multilingual person with aphasia. Our aim was to discover whether the assessment outcome would differ meaningfully when we count accurate responses in only the target language of the assessment session versus when we apply a translanguaging framework, that is, count all accurate responses, regardless of the language in which they were produced. The participant is a Farsi-German-English speaking woman with chronic moderate aphasia. We examined the participant’s performance on two picture-naming tasks, an answering wh-question task, and an elicited narrative task. The results demonstrated that scores in English, the participant’s third-learned and least-impaired language did not differ between the two scoring methods. Performance in German, the participant’s moderately impaired second language benefited from translanguaging-based scoring across the board. In Farsi, her weakest language post-CVA, the participant’s scores were higher under the translanguaging-based scoring approach in some but not all of the tasks. Our findings suggest that whether a translanguaging-based scoring makes a difference in the results obtained depends on relative language abilities and on pragmatic constraints, with additional influence of the linguistic distances between the languages in question.
2023
Antolovic, K., Higby, E., Obler, L. In The Cambridge Handbook of Third Language Acquisition
Aging is a multidimensional process that introduces biological, social, and cognitive changes. The cognitive changes individuals experience during healthy aging are impacted by one’s lifestyle and patterns of behavior. In this chapter, we explore how multilingual language use uniquely contributes to cognitive aging and may stave off cognitive and neurological declines that commonly occur as we age. To this end, we first examine the range of executive functions that are impacted by multilingualism across the lifespan. Next, we explore the neurological implications of cognitive aging by outlining three neurocognitive mechanisms involved in aging, namely cognitive reserve, maintenance, and compensation. Integrating research from the available literature on healthy and pathological aging, we consider whether multilingualism strengthens and alters the neural bases of cognitive aging. As research on multilingual aging is nascent, our chapter ends with an agenda for future research that considers factors unique to multilingualism.
2023
Strangmann, I., Antolovic, K., Hansen, P., & Simonsen, H. In The Mental Lexicon
Cognates, words that are similar in form and meaning across two languages, form compelling test cases for bilingual access and representation. Overwhelmingly, cognate pairs are subjectively selected in a categorical either- or manner, often with criteria and modality unspecified. Yet the few studies that take a more nuanced approach, selecting cognate pairs along a continuum of overlap, show interesting, albeit somewhat divergent results. This study compares three measures that quantify cognateness continuously to obtain modality-specific cognate scores for the same set of Norwegian-English word-translation pairs: (1) Researcher Intuitions – bilingual researchers rate the degree of overlap between the paired words, (2) Levenshtein Distance – an algorithm that computes overlap between word pairs, and (3) Translation Elicitation – English-speaking monolinguals guess what Norwegian words mean. Results demonstrate that cognateness can be ranked on a continuum and reveal measure and modality-specific effects. Orthographic presentation yields higher cognateness status than auditory presentation overall. Though all three measures intercorrelated moderately to highly, Researcher Intuitions demonstrated a bimodal distribution, yielding scores on the high and low end of the spectrum, consistent with the common categorical approach in the field. Levenshtein Distance would be preferred for fine-grained distinctions along the continuum of form overlap.
2022
Bishop, J., Zhou, C., Antolovic, K., Grebe, L., Hwang, K., Imaezue, G.,Kistanova, E., Lee, K., Paulino, K. & Zhang, S. In Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders
A growing body of research finds that neurotypical autistic traits are predictive of speech perception and language comprehension patterns, but considerably less is known about the influence of these traits on speech production. In this brief report, we present an analysis of vowel productions from 74 American English speakers who participated in a communicative speaking task. Results show higher autistic trait load to be broadly and inversely related to spectral correlates of vowel intelligibility. However, the statistical significance of this relationship is specific to autistic traits along the pragmatic communication dimension, and limited to female speakers.
2022
Xie, Z., & Antolovic, K. In Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
The relationship between bilingualism and cognitive control has been controversial. We believe that the discrepant findings are likely driven by the complexities of the bilingual experience, which is consistent with the Adaptive Control Hypothesis. The current study investigates whether the natural language immersion experience and the classroom intensive language training experience have differential impacts on cognitive control. Among unbalanced Chinese-English bilingual students, a natural L2 (second language) immersion group, an L2 public speaking training group, and a control bilingual group without immersion or training experience were compared on their cognitive control abilities, with the participants’ demographic factors strictly controlled. The results showed that the L2 immersion group and the L2 speaking group had faster speed than the control group in the Flanker task, whereas the L2 immersion group had fewer errors than the other two groups in the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST). These results generally provide evidence in favour of the Adaptive Control Hypothesis, specifying that natural L2 immersion and L2 public speaking training experiences are distinctively related to cognitive control. The current study is the first of its kind to link specific bilingual experiences (natural L2 immersion vs. intensive L2 public speaking) with different components of cognitive control.
My dissertation work seeks to better understand how cognitive aging impacts the way speakers use input to guide speech production. Cognitive aging introduces changes in how individuals avoid interference during task performance, making the study of aging an interesting vehicle for understanding phenomena such as speech production.
In doing so, I move away from rigid models of the mental lexicon that assume a hierarchical structure to lexical-semantic representation. Alternatively, I adopt the framework of a dynamic lexicon that shifts with speaker and contextual input, drawing from a model known as the Swinging Lexical Network Hypothesis (e.g., Abdel Rahman & Melinger, 2019).
To assess how cognitive aging impacts lexical selection and word production, I use a mixed-methods approach that combines behavioral measures and neural responses (via EEG).
This study employed a psycholinguistic and cognitive framework to investigate sources of interference during word retrieval for older adults. We used a modified picture-word interference paradigm, adapted for online data collection, to explore the types of semantic relationships that can delay lexical selection. This work also examined whether older adults are indeed more susceptible to linguistic interference than younger adults, as proposed by models from cognitive psychology. Finally, I explored how a person’s ability to manage linguistic interference is linked to their ability to manage non-linguistic forms of interference.
Poster presented at the 2022 International Conference on the Mental Lexicon (view poster).
Fall 2023
Dissertation Fellowship
Spring 2022
Glenis Long Research Design Award
Spring 2020
Doctoral Student Research Grant
Fall 2020
Provost’s University Fellowship
Spring 2019
Moe and Hannah Bergman Scholarship
Fall 2018
Science Fellowship