A new project with the participation of CINTESIS – Center for Health Technology and Services Research – will trace the neurocognitive profile of children with Specific Language Disorders (SLD) in Portugal, which are underdiagnosed.
The researchers, among whom is Marisa Lousada (CINTESIS/University of Aveiro), will now evaluate the role of procedural and declarative memory in about a hundred Portuguese preschool children.
“Children with a Specific Language Disorder (or a developmental language disorder), whose prevalence is estimated at 6%, have significant language impairment without a known cause (neurological injury, hearing loss, intellectual developmental disorder). Moreover, these children often have severe difficulties in learning to read and write” explains Marisa Lousada.
The researcher will collaborate in the recruitment of children with this disorder and in guiding the language assessment of these children, using instruments such as the Language Test. One of the main objectives is to understand to what extent deficits in procedural memory functioning can contribute to the difficulties observed in Specific Language Disorders and to what extent mechanisms associated with declarative memory can be mobilized to compensate for such deficits. To do so, they will use a new approach that combines an Artificial Grammar Learning paradigm with the brain evoked potentials technique.
With this project, we hope to help create more effective diagnostic and intervention strategies and prevent these children from developing Developmental Dyslexia upon entering school, as happens in about half of the cases. “We hope to contribute to an in-depth knowledge of Specific Language Disorder. We also want to know the markers that can help identify in a timely way the children who will present severe difficulties at the school level. In the end, we will be able to develop intervention programs for children with specific disorders that can minimize the effects at the level of school success”, says Marisa Lousada.
Led by the University of Minho, the project “Neurodevelopmental correlates of implicit-explicit learning mechanisms in children with Specific Language Disorders: Evidence with brain evoked potentials”, whose responsible researcher is Ana Paula Soares, has the participation of the University of Aveiro/CINTESIS and the Polytechnic Institute of Porto.