Members of the Center for Language and Brain took part in a linguistic expedition in the Republic of Adygea

Members of the Language Center for Language and Brain together with colleagues from the Laboratory of Experimental Linguistics at the Adyghe State University conducted a field expedition in the aul Dzhambechiy, the Republic of Adygea.

From July 1st to July 15th, 2023, a team from the Center for Language and Brain (Olga Dragoy - a head of the expedition, Aigul Khanova, Nina Zdorova, Bela Ogly, and Alexandra Korzhenevskaya) took part in a linguistic expedition in cooperation with the Laboratory of Experimental Linguistics at the Adyghe State University (Susanna Makerova, Nafiset Naumova, and Aida Bguasheva). Researchers conducted a field study in the aul Dzhambechy, Republic of Adygea, Russia.

 

The expedition was dedicated to the studies of reading and cognitive functions in Adyghe-Russian bilinguals. Within the expedition, three eye-tracking experiments were conducted. The purpose of the first experiment was to study eye fixations while reading sentences in Adyghe. The aim of the second experiment was to determine a landing position of the first fixation on a word depending on the word’s morphemic structure. The purpose of the third experiment was to determine which type of clauses is more easily processed by Adyghe speakers – absolutive object relative clause or ergative subject relative clause. 

 

Participants also completed some cognitive tests: a test for measuring a person's selective attention capacity "Stroop's Test", a test for measuring non-verbal intelligence and abstract reasoning "Raven's Matrices" and a test for assessing memory "Rey's Test", presented in Russian and Adyghe languages.  

A report on this project is also available in the archives of the Adyghe State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (https://t.me/gtrk_adygeia/9239). An informal video about the expedition is also available in the Telegram channel of the Center for Language and Brain (https://t.me/clb_hse/37).