Vanja Kljajevic

• Kljajevic, Vanja & Saric, Ljiljana (2025). Corpus-Based Investigation of Proverbs: Challenges and New Directions. Corpus Pragmatics. ISSN 2509-9507. 9, p. 135–163. doi: 10.1007/s41701-024-00181-2. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Proverbs are an important component of cultural literacy and thus they are often encountered in everyday life. Corpus-based studies of proverbs typically focus on proverb frequency. Here we address challenges in using general language corpora and corpus searches as a method for estimating proverb frequency. Using two general language corpora from Sketch Engine, HrWaC2.2 and NoTenTen17, to search for a semantic counterpart of the same proverb in Croatian and Norwegian, we explore various search options and their (dis)advantages, as well as the issue of proverb modifications that hinders attempts to obtain a reliable picture of proverb frequency in a corpus. Based on the corpus evidence, we provide insights into modification types of proverbs. Finally, we propose that an optimal search tool would consider a proverb’s features beyond frequency, such as its semantic class, syntactic complexity, and abstractness as contributors to its cognitive load, allowing a better selection of these expressions in clinical testing, education, research and entertainment.

• Kljajevic, Vanja (2024). Increasing sensitivity of clinical proverb tests for diagnosis of dementia. Alzheimer's & Dementia. ISSN 1552-5260. doi: 10.1002/alz.13688. Full text in Research Archive
• Kljajevic, Vanja (2024). Embracing virtual reality in rehabilitation of post-stroke aphasia. Digital Health. 10. doi: 10.1177/20552076241271823. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  About one-third of stroke survivors experience aphasia, i.e., language dysfunction caused by brain damage. Aphasia affects not only a person's ability to communicate, but it often leads to the inability to return to work, loss of close relationships, diminished quality of life, negative self-perception, and depression. Yet persons with aphasia are globally underserved due to limited access to resources, which limits their chance for recovery. Immersive virtual reality (VR) has the potential to solve this problem and deliver efficient, personalized treatments to millions of people worldwide who need access to rehabilitation services or more flexibility in treatment delivery. To reduce the global burden of stroke experts recommend taking bold, pragmatic actions across all four pillars of stroke quadrangle—surveillance, prevention, acute care, and rehabilitation. Embracing immersive VR-based rehabilitation of poststroke aphasia would be one step in that direction.

• Kljajevic, Vanja; Evensmoen, Hallvard Røe; Sokołowski, Daniel; Pani, Jasmine; Hansen, Tor Ivar & Håberg, Asta (2023). Female advantage in verbal learning revisited: a HUNT study. Memory. ISSN 0965-8211. 31(6), p. 831–849. doi: 10.1080/09658211.2023.2203431. Full text in Research Archive
• Kljajevic, Vanja (2022). Literacy and Numeracy in Children on Autism Spectrum Disorder. Advances in Neurodevelopmental Disorders. ISSN 2366-7532. 7, p. 123–129. doi: 10.1007/s41252-022-00291-5. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Objectives The variability in patterns of acquisition of literacy and numeracy skills in young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is currently not well understood. In the present study, we investigated these skills in cognitively able children with ASD ages 7–12 years. Methods Using independent samples t test, we compared autistic children’s scores on word reading, spelling, and numerical operations with those of typically developing children in the same age group. A paired-samples t test was used to assess whether reading, spelling, and numerical operations scores were comparable within the ASD group. Finally, we tested whether verbal IQ mediated the effect of diagnostic status on these scores. Results The main findings of the study are that autistic children had worse scores on numerical operations than the control group (t(54.112) =  − 3.326, p = .002, d =  − .314), but the groups’ scores were similar in word reading and spelling. The autistic children had significantly better scores on word reading and spelling than on numerical operations. All scores of autistic children were positively associated with their verbal IQ scores. Verbal IQ mediated the effect of diagnostic status on all outcome variables. Conclusion These findings extend current understanding of patterns of acquisition of literacy and numeracy skills in young children with ASD, suggesting a critical role of verbal abilities in the acquisition of numerical skills.

• Kljajevic, Vanja (2022). Verbal Learning and Hemispheric Asymmetry. Frontiers in Psychology. 12. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.809192. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Cognitive sex differences have been the focus of much research in psychology since the 1960s. The idea that women outperform men in some aspects of verbal learning (e.g., Bleecker et al., 1988; Kramer et al., 1997; Ragland et al., 2000; Sundermann et al., 2016), whereas men outperform women in math and spatial reasoning (e.g., Meinz and Salthouse, 1998; Maguire et al., 1999) has been a matter of debate, in which an opposing stance is formulated as the gender similarity hypothesis (Hyde, 2005, 2016). According to this hypothesis, men and women perform at comparable levels in most cognitive tasks, with major differences arising in their motor abilities, sexual behavior, and aggression. A recent meta-analysis of 617 studies involving 1,233,921 participants suggests an overall female advantage for episodic memory, including verbal tasks at the levels of word, sentence and discourse, retrieval of names for images and locations, as well as recognition of faces, odors, colors, and tastes, and a male advantage in spatial tasks, including remembering of abstract images and routes (Asperholm et al., 2019a). The observed sex differences were smaller in childhood and old age than in other ages. The female advantage in verbal and other episodic memory tests, which was observed in a sample that was followed for over 40 years, has been related to the fact that, overall, women benefit more than men from societal improvements, such as better education, employment opportunities, and cognitively more stimulating environments, because women might have been at a more disadvantageous level at start (Asperholm et al., 2019b). This view is supported by the findings from a large scale study with 34,300 individuals between 50 and 84 years of age that were recruited across Europe: the Flynn effect, i.e., improvement over time in cognitive performance in people of the same age in new generations, was greater in women than in men for both episodic and semantic memory, although the magnitude of the effect varied across regions (Weber et al., 2017).

• Kljajevic, Vanja (2022). Older and Wiser: Interpretation of Proverbs in the Face of Age-Related Cortical Atrophy. Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience. 14. doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2022.919470. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In the present study, we investigated whether interpretation of proverbs differs across the lifespan and if so, whether it is associated with age-related fronto-temporal atrophy. Using a sample of 333 healthy individuals aged 18–89 years, we found a significant effect of age on proverb interpretation [H(2) = 12.001, p = 0.002]: old adults (OA) were better than young adults (YA) (p = 0.002), and so were middle-aged-adults (MA) (p = 0.005). OA and MA had significantly less grey matter (GM) than YA in frontal and temporal lobes bilaterally, and OA less than MA in the right temporal lobe. GM volumes in these regions did not moderate the effect of age on the proverbs scores. The whole-brain analysis of groups’ GM maps revealed that the proverbs scores were associated with more GM in YA relative to OA in the right middle temporal gyrus, which is consistent with evidence on the role of this area in processing of unfamiliar proverbs. Overall, our data suggest that interpretation of proverbs is well preserved in late adulthood, despite considerable age-related cortical atrophy.

• Kljajevic, Vanja (2021). Neurology of Humor. In Shackelford, Todd K. (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer. ISSN 9783319196510. Full text in Research Archive

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• Kljajevic, Vanja (2021). Consensual Illusion: The Mind in Virtual Reality. Springer. ISBN 9783662637425. 140 p. Full text in Research Archive

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• Kljajevic, Vanja (2024). Disentangling the underlying mechanisms of verbal fluency decline in cognitive aging. Full text in Research Archive
• Kljajevic, Vanja (2022). Current evidence for the effectiveness of therapy for speech and language disorders. Full text in Research Archive
• Kljajevic, Vanja (2022). Profession-related voice disorders: assessment and therapy. Full text in Research Archive

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