CIPA213 Developmental Language Related Disorders (5 cr)
Description
The course will cover related topics, including specific language impairment and dyslexia –phenotypes, characteristics of reading disorders in different languages (orthographies), development of auditory and speech perception, development of language acquisition and reading, genes and language related disorders, neural substrates and neurocognitive risk factors as well as training for these difficulties.
It is difficult to prevent a child from learning to speak without exposing him/her to extreme conditions, and yet some of children have great difficulties in learning to speak and comprehend speech. They have specific language impairment (SLI). Other children have difficulties in learning to read and write fluently, a condition known as dyslexia, which is a major obstacle, not only in school but also all areas of life in the modern society.
Why do some children face with these developmental learning difficulties? How much is due to environmental factors and what role do genes play? How are the observed behavioral manifestations reflected in differences in the brain structure or functioning? This short course aims to deal with these kinds of questions incorporating newest relevant research of behavioral, genetic and cognitive neuroscience of language and reading. The course invites experts in the field to discuss these topics from the perspective of their own findings.Learning outcomes
The student will have a comprehensive overall view of the phenotypes of language related disorders, understand the basic principles of development of language and related skills, understand the underlying risk factors and their accumulation in developmental learning disorders, have a basic view of different types of training methods for these disorders, and is able to evaluate articles/literature on language and reading disorders.
Study materials
To be announced by the course instructor.