This doctoral thesis used qualitative research methods and adopted an exploratory-interpretative approach. Although conducted as an independent study, it forms part of the RCM project “Innovative forms of assessment (IFB)”, a quantitative study that aimed to better understand the validity of new, scenario-based task and item types.

The project offers a space for methodological reflections about critical ethnographic sociolinguistic research based on researchers’ experiences. On a dedicated website, the team makes available a collection of personal tales about specific problems that raise questions for the researchers, which are seen as opportunities to make sense of, and lead toward a better comprehension of, the phenomena, institutions and actors that are studied.  

This exploratory project addresses the question of the origins of individual differences in language aptitude, at different levels of language processing including but not limited to native language phonological, lexical and syntactic processing. This question will be addressed across different levels of multilingual language experience (i.e. in monolinguals, bilinguals and polyglots), in line with the idea that extreme giftedness, healthy  variability and at least some disorders...