Rui A. Alves

University of Porto (Portugal)

Writing Difficulties in Neurodevelopmental Disorders: From Assessment to Intervention

Participants: Celestino Rodríguez1; Teresa Jacques2; Mariana Silva2 and Douglas de Araújo Vilhena3

1University of Oviedo; 2Universidade do Porto (Portugal); 3Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (Brazil)

Symposium Summary

Contemporary knowledge societies, from school to work, require good writing skills if any degree of personal and professional success is to be achieved. However, mastering writing is a remarkably difficult task. Even more so in the context of neurodevelopmental disorders. Therefore, it is important to learn how writing development might impose additional obstacles and barriers for children with developmental disorders. In this symposium, we characterize the challenges of writing for four neurodevelopmental disorders, namely attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, developmental coordination disorder, autism, and dyslexia.

Symposium speakers reviewed the recent empirical evidence available, with a dual focus on the assessment of writing difficulties and effective writing interventions for each disorder. Data from these reviews will be shared and discussed in light of the recent Writer(s) in Communities model (Graham, 2018) and the Response to Intervention framework.

Short CV

Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Porto, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences. His main research interests are the cognitive and affective processes of writing, literacy development and learning disabilities. Specifically, in a recently concluded funded research project (DAAR, Development, Automation and Self-Regulation of Cognitive Processes in Writing), he and his partners have studied the development of text production using a self-developed handwriting recording software (HandSpy) and have developed a series of evidence-based writing interventions that address the cognitive, motivational and self-regulatory aspects of writing. In an ongoing research grant, he is exploring the psychophysiological and linguistic synchronic correlates of expressive writing (M-BW, Mind-Body Interactions in Writing; BIAL 312/16). He is a former coordinator of the Special Interest Group on Writing of the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (2011-15). He is currently the acting coordinator of the European Literacy Network (ELN), a pan-European network involving some 550 researchers from 52 countries. The overall objective of the ELN is to bridge the gap between the science of literacy and education. Rui A. Alves is also deeply committed to scientific publishing, in particular, he is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Educational Psychology, Written Communication, Studies in Writing Series, Literacy Studies Series, and Associate Editor of two ISI-indexed journals, Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Springer and Culture & Education, Routledge.
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