Lectures and seminars Guest seminar: SUVAG Polyclinic
Insights into ongoing aphasia research and clinical speech-language pathology services at SUVAG Polyclinic, Zagreb, Croatia.
Syntactic processing in individuals with aphasia
Martina Vuković Ogrizek, SLP
The present doctoral research investigates online syntactic processing in Croatian-speaking people with aphasia (PwA), a population that provides an important testing ground for theories of sentence processing in morphologically rich languages with relatively flexible word order. Using the Visual World Paradigm and continuous eye-tracking, the study examines whether word order and animacy facilitate sentence comprehension and whether PwA employ different processing strategies from healthy adults. The preliminary results are based on data from 17 PwA and 10 control participants who listened to relative clauses presented in canonical (SVO) and non-canonical (OVS) word orders while viewing four-image visual displays.
Assessment and treatment of neurogenic communication disorders at the SUVAG Polyclinic – the verbotonal approach
Karolina Lice, SLP, Ass. Professor
The SUVAG Polyclinic was founded in Zagreb in 1961 by Academician Petar Guberina and adopted its present name in 1994. It is the only institution of its kind in Croatia, hosts two Ministry of Health reference centres — one for the verbotonal method in speech-language pathology and one for the diagnosis and rehabilitation of hearing impairment. As Croatia's leading hearing-rehabilitation institution, SUVAG's Centre for Cochlear Implants and Early Rehabilitation is where the great majority of the country's cochlear-implant population receives speech-processor fitting and adjustment. Approximately 1,000 patients participate in its diagnostic and rehabilitation programmes each day, more than 80% of whom are children with hearing or speech-language impairments. The assessment and treatment of neurogenic communication disorders are provided within the Speech-Language Pathology Services. In 2025, the Service treated approximately 261 patients with neurogenic communication disorders: including aphasia, dysarthria, apraxia of speech, cognitive-communication disorder, and dysphagia following stroke, traumatic brain injury, brain tumour, brain infection, or various neurodegenerative diseases.