Fecha: 28 de Octubre de 2024

Lugar: Barcelona

Evento: Mesas de debate  Cubik Hub 2024.

El HUB se configura como un espacio poliédrico donde se fijan planteamientos realistas, dando voz a los sectores involucrados con el segmento de la restauración, con el fin de generar soluciones concretas.

En este caso, participé de la Mesa III, bajo la temática ” La gastronomía local como identidad de la ciudad”, junto con los panelistas Nacho Péres y Oscar Teruelo

El objetivo :  explorar la identidad gastronómica local, la sostenibilidad y los retos del sector rural catalán, algo muy vinculado a mi investigación doctoral sobre la vida social en los bares , en concreto sobre un pequeño pueblo afectado por la despoblación.   Hablé sobre  la pérdida de autenticidad gastronómica debido al turismo masivo, el impacto de la industrialización agrícola, y la necesidad de promover un modelo de economía circular en el sector Horeca. En mi intervención,  traté la problemática del modelo lineal actual,bajo mi punto de vista insostenible, basado en un consumo excesivo y en  la generación de residuos. También se abordó la cuestión de la tecnología aplicada al sector rural y sobre el riesgo de que su uso excesivo deshumanice el proceso agrícola.  Si se implementa con responsabilidad, la tecnología puede ayudar a preservar la autenticidad de los productos locales y apoyar a las comunidades rurales en su supervivencia económica y cultural.

In March 2025, we published the second article of my thesis, titled ‘HowChildren With and Without Developmental Language Disorder Use Prosody and Gestures to Process
Phrasal Ambiguities’. In this article, we investigated how children with and without Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) utilize prosodic and gestural cues to resolve phrasal ambiguities. We presented sentences with potential multiple interpretations to children, comparing conditions with only prosodic cues versus conditions with both prosodic and gestural cues. The results showed that children, including those with DLD, were able to use prosodic cues effectively to interpret phrasal ambiguities. However, adding gestures to prosody did not significantly enhance the children’s accuracy. Additionally, eye-tracking data indicated that while gestures did not impact final interpretations, they influenced visual attention patterns during sentence processing.

Through this research, I gained insights into the complexity of multimodal language comprehension and the nuanced ways children with language difficulties process linguistic information. Specifically, I learned about the importance of carefully distinguishing between immediate processing (captured through eye movements) and final comprehension outcomes (captured through explicit choices). This distinction emphasized to me that multimodal cues like gestures can guide children’s attention differently, even when they do not directly impact comprehension accuracy. Additionally, conducting an eye-tracking experiment helped me understand the methodological challenges and advantages of using real-time measures to investigate subtle linguistic phenomena.

In March 2025, we published an article entitled “Prosody and gestures help pragmatic processing in children with Developmental Language Disorder” in the Journal of Communication Disorders. This study investigated how prosodic (intonation) and gestural (body language) cues assist children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) in comprehending pragmatic meanings, such as interrogative sentences and indirect requests. Using visual-world eye-tracking tasks, the results showed that while prosodic cues alone are helpful, their combination with gestures significantly enhances pragmatic comprehension, especially in more complex scenarios and among older children with DLD.

Through this publication process, I gained valuable insights into the importance of multimodal communication strategies in language intervention and learned advanced methodologies in experimental design and eye-tracking data analysis. Additionally, collaborating closely with a diverse research team greatly enhanced my interdisciplinary research skills and understanding of pragmatic language development.

Date: March 27-30, 2025

Place: NH Ventas (Madrid)

Event: XVI congreso Nacional de Neuropsicología

Co-authored and presented a poster titled “Bilingüismo y cognición: el impacto de la competencia y uso del lenguaje en adultos mayores sanos”. The poster was developed in collaboration with Gonzalo Sánchez-Benavides, Oriol Grau-Rivera, Miguel Santos-Santos, Laia Subirats, Ferran Prados and Marco Calabria.

The presentation focused on the impact of bilingualism on the cognition of cognitively healthy older adults, aged 45 to 70, who are part of the Alzheimer’s and Families (ALFA) study. To this end, we considered the participants’ diverse bilingual experiences based on their age of acquisition, proficiency level, and active lifelong use of Catalan and Spanish.