NEUS2700 Developmental Language Related Disorders (5 cr)

Why do some children have great difficulties in learning to speak and comprehend speech (DLD, developmental language difficulties) or to read and write fluently (dyslexia) or acquiring basic mathematical skills or in focusing, directing and keeping their attention in the relevant tasks. Yet some children have learning related socio-emotional problems. How much is all this 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, special educational, neuropsychological, cognitive neuroscience and genetic approaches. The course invites experts in the field to discuss these topics from the perspective of their own research.

The student will have a basic understanding of learning related problems and basic principles of development of related skills. The student will understand the dimensional and multifactorial basis and underlying risk and protective factors and their accumulation in developmental learning difficulties. The student can apply the knowledge for selecting appropriate intervention and training approaches and critically evaluate articles/literature on learning related neurodevelopmental disorders.

• Lectures or and/or video and powerpoint presentations of the content topics.

• Handouts of the lecture material will be available as pdfs.

• Key relevant articles /book chapters supporting the lectures are available as pdfs.

• In addition, the students are expected to search relevant literature from the online databases and using e.g. Google Scholar and other literature database tools.

• Visiting lectures will give lectures on their expertise topics.