Marisa Lousada, a researcher at CINTESIS/University of Aveiro, received the Dr. Maria Lutegarda Scientific Research Award from the AFID Difference Foundation, in a ceremony held last December at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
This second edition of the Award considered the collective research work of development and validation of PROsyntax – Intervention Program in the Syntactic Domain, aimed at children with Language Disorders. The pecuniary value is four thousand Euros.
“For me, it is an honor to receive this collective research award of rehabilitation with a program that is a response to a need in the clinical practice of speech therapists, showing that research and clinical practice should develop with mutual benefit”, reacts Marisa Lousada.
As explained by the CINTESIS/UA researcher and speech therapist, PROsyntax is “a program that aims to improve the syntactic skills of children with language disorders, considering that the metalinguistic approach has a high level of effectiveness. This approach proposes explicit language training, using visual supports (writing or images) and the codification of parts of speech through a system of colors and shapes”.
This program, she adds, “can be applied to children with various language disorders, namely with Developmental Disorders of Language that present difficulties in understanding and producing specific sentences, and can also be useful in the speech therapist’s clinical practice with children with certain biomedical conditions such as Autism Spectrum Disorder.
According to the announcement, “the program has two versions, one for preschool children and another for school-age children, and is the first program developed and validated for European Portuguese in the area of syntax.”
At the moment, the team is analyzing the effects of this program with randomized controlled studies in specific populations, namely in children with Developmental Language Disorder and in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The results will be known soon.
Meanwhile, the trademark registration process is already underway, and the licensing to a company interested in commercializing this program is expected to be completed soon, and “it should be available to the clinical and scientific community in a few months”.
In addition to Marisa Lousada, researcher at CINTESIS/UA and ESSUA professor, Alexandrina Martins (CLUL/ ESSUA), Mafalda Azevedo (UA), and Raquel Crespo are part of the team.
The Dr. Maria Lutegarda Scientific Research Award, which was sponsored by the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, was created in memory of the director of the AFID Difference Foundation. This award also aims to stimulate research and innovation in the areas of rehabilitation and intervention for people with disabilities and promote their social inclusion, fight discrimination, and promote equal opportunities.