The project aims to promote an integrated, multi-level, and systematic approach to Linguistic Complexity (LC)/Processing Difficulty (PD) in Italian and is expected to produce the following outcomes:
- global and domain-specific measures of LC accounting for morphological, syntactic, and lexical dimensions;
- a set of standardized procedures to assess LC in texts written by Italian grade 13 students, native and non-native speakers, with typical and atypical language development;
- a set of standardized procedures to assess the comprehension and processing of texts with variable complexity levels; empirical evidence of the relationships between LC and text comprehension and processing in different populations; empirical evidence of the relationships between LC features in written production and reading comprehension skills in different populations;
- empirical evidence of the role of LC (interacting with other text features, task demands and respondent skills) in predicting performances in a large-scale assessment of reading comprehension;
- algorithms and software prototypes for operationalizing LC, in particular for the extraction of multi-level LC features and for assessing potential PD in the target populations;
- reference resources for Italian, including the annotated corpora used for studying LC effects on comprehension and production, elicitation tests, data collected from different populations;
- research-based recommendations to enhance awareness of LC and PD in school contexts, with the aim of improving formative assessment, development of instructional material, evaluation and teaching of reading comprehension skills.