Emotional regulation and development of children with neurodevelopmental disorders and their families
The world of emotions and their regulation is a complex process that is still full of unknowns as far as research is concerned. The new diagnostic approach to DLD has broadened the framework for understanding the disorder, treating social and emotional difficulties as key factors in furthering our knowledge of the disorder's impact on the lives of children who suffer from it. In addition, this line of research proposes a comprehensive approach to the disorder in which family plays an important and active part. We want to learn about the emotional regulation difficulties suffered by patients' families, as well as the emotions and difficulties they face throughout the process of finding professional help and securing a diagnosis and treatment.
Contact: Mari Aguilera (mari.aguilera@ub.edu) and Nadia Ahufinger (nadiahufinger@uoc.edu).
Inclusion of the feminist perspective in the identification, assessment and treatment of children with learning and language difficulties
Although the cause of developmental language disorder is not yet fully understood, the risk factors associated with it have been studied and defined. These include a family history of language difficulties, being the youngest sibling in the family, having a mother with a low level of education, being a late talker and being male. But does this disorder manifest equally in boys and girls? What do we know about the biological differences between boys and girls in relation to it? What role does socialization based on sexist stereotypes play in this disorder? Does research into it consider the differences between boys and girls? This research line attempts to answer all these questions through literature reviews and experimental studies.
Contact: Nadia Ahufinger (nadiahufinger@uoc.edu)
Study of clinical markers and creation of detection and evaluation tools for language development difficulties at the level of oral communication.
Currently, there is a lack of oral language assessment tests in Catalan. Això fa que professionals de la logopèdia, psicologia i professorat hagin de valorar el nivell lingüístic dels infants amb proves estandarditzades en castellà, o bé que hagin de traduir-les al català però utilitzant les escales en castellà. These practices generate substantial errors in assessment and diagnosis. The aim of this project is to translate, adapt and validate these assessment tests in the Catalan language. In addition, we are working on the creation of new screening tools in Catalan and the adaptation of other tests based on other languages. We are also developing a set of non-linguistic diagnostic clinical markers for language disorders that are independent of their mother tongue so that they can be used with children who speak different languages.
Contact: Mònica Sanz Torrent (monicasanz@ub.edu)
Analysis of the role of the declarative and procedural memory systems in the learning of vocabulary and grammar in children with SLI/TDL and without.
This line of research focuses on finding out how children with SLI/TDL acquire language. Vocabulary and grammar are engaged in different neural systems. These systems fundamentally distinguish the lexical system, where the phonological information and its associated meanings are deposited, and the grammatical system, which computes the meanings of complex forms using grammatical rules. According to the declarative/procedural model of language, these two types of processing are further handled through two different systems: the declarative system for the lexicon and the procedural system for the grammar. Children with SLI/TDL are very heterogeneous because they present difficulties in both vocabulary and grammar. This project analyzes how these two systems (declarative and procedural) work in learning vocabulary and grammar in a population with and without SLI/TDL.
Contact: Nadia Ahufinger (nadiahufinger@uoc.edu)
Analysis of the main predictors of reading and writing development in children with and without SLI/TDL.
A high percentage of children with SLI/TDL, around 50%, have reading learning difficulties and between 22% and 83%, depending on the criteria used, would be poor comprehenders. In addition, children with SLI/TDL also regularly have writing problems. Most of the studies carried out on monolingual English-speaking children; that it is an opaque language, of poor morphology and very rigid in the syntactic structure. In this sense, the main objective of this line is to analyze which variables determine that children with Catalan-Spanish bilingual SLI/TDL present difficulties in decoding and/or reading comprehension and which are the difficulties in writing, taking into account that both languages are transparent. , morphologically rich and syntactically flexible. The objective of this line will also be to analyze the main predictors of reading and writing development in children without difficulties, both Catalan and Spanish-speaking.
Contact: Llorenç Andreu (landreub@uoc.edu) i Cristina Martínez-García (cmartinezgarcia8@uoc.edu)
Development of evidence-based programs for the intervention of language and communication disorders in childhood.
Children with communication and language disorders need evidence-based treatments and evaluations, which can be offered through face-to-face interventions and telematically - online (teleintervention) to progress at different vital milestones. In addition, the best practices of speech therapy intervention in clinical and educational settings require effective and efficient implementation practices, taking into account clinical experience, scientific evidence, and the perspectives of the person served. This line focuses on the study of evaluation and treatment programs for communication and language pathologies in neurodevelopmental disorders (eg, TDL/SLI and ASD) from the framework of applied research.
Contact: Llorenç Andreu (landreub@uoc.edu)
Analysis of the role of speech prosody and body gestures in the linguistic processing of children with SLI/TDL and ASD.
The communicative intention of the speakers goes beyond the literalness of the words used (the lexicon) or how they are combined (morphosyntax). In this line of research, we study how children with typical and atypical development understand this communicative intention, the pragmatic dimension of language. To do this, we look at two communicative elements that contribute to transmitting the pragmatic meaning: prosody, that is, intonation, rhythm and accent of speech, and body gestures. Building on previous studies that highlight the importance of pragmatic skills in language acquisition, we want to investigate whether the presence of prosodic and gestural markers can help children with developmental language disorders (SLI/TDL) or autism spectrum disorders. (TEA) to understand the communicative intention of the people with whom they interact. The results of these studies can help to understand which is the most suitable context for both children with SLI/DD and ASD to develop communication skills in the best possible way.
Contact: Núria Esteve Gibert (nesteveg@uoc.edu)
