Since february of 2024, this paper has been under writing and will be submited to the Special Issue “Language and Cognitive Development in Deaf Children” from the  Behavioral Sciences (ISSN 2076-328X) on 25 of April.

Behavioral Sciences is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal on psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science, behavioral biology and behavioral genetics published monthly online by MDPI. Impact factor 2.5, citescore 2.6.

Abstract: Theory of Mind (ToM) is a construct that includes a range of connected abilities linked to the understanding of others mental states. During the last 3 decades, ToM development has been extensively studied in deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) individuals compared to typically hearing (TH) individuals and themselves. As early diagnosis of deafness and hearing technology have greatly improved over the years, differences on DHH ToM task performance across this time span might be expected. The current systematic review (SR) aims to synthesize which ToM skills have been assessed in DHH individuals and answer the following PICO question: Do DHH individuals (Population), compared to a control sample of TH and/or among themselves (Comparator), in an assessment of ToM (Intervention) have differentiated results (Outcome)?. 97 papers were included. The SR found that false belief is the area most studied. Furthermore, TH participants, in general, outperformed their DHH peers in ToM measures. There is variability linked to family hearing status and quality of interactions, language modality and across different ToM abilities assessed. Despite recent advances in diagnosis and hearing technology, DHH individuals continue to differ on ToM development. However, other ToM areas, aside from false belief, require further research.

I actively participated in a systematic review with meta-analysis on digital interventions for managing depression in primary care. This experience deepened my understanding of the methodology and challenges involved. I gained insight into the importance of a rigorous approach to ensure reliable, objective results, as well as skills in critically evaluating sources and managing large volumes of information systematically. The resulting article has been accepted and is now in the publication process.

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.

This academic year we started analysing the results from ALFA cohort. We develop a statistical analysis plan that included four steps: 1) Principal Component Analysis of Language measures (Proficiency, Age of acquisition and frequency of use of Catalan and Spanish); 2) K-means clustering of the PCA results to create groups based on Language profiles; 3) Analysis of the Variance (ANOVA) of sociodemographic and language measures of the groups obtained in the k-means clustering and 4) An Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) with multiple covariates was conducted to examine the effects of language profile clusters (3 levels) and the language of assessment (Catalan or Spanish), controlling for age, years of education, sex, and adjusted cognitive reserve score, on 13 neuropsychological test scores: (1) MMSE, (2) Semantic Fluency, (3) MBT Total Free Recall, (4) MBT Total Paired Recall, (5) MBT Total Delayed Paired Recall, (6) MBT Total Delayed Free Recall, (7) WAIS-IV Coding, (8) WAIS-IV Matrix Reasoning, (9) WAIS-IV Visual Puzzles, (10) WAIS-IV Digits Total Score, (11) Digits Direct Span, (12) Digits Indirect Span, and (13) Digits Sequential Span.

We are in the process of writing a manuscript based on these results that will be the first article of my thesis. In the process we intend to present this results as posters in several congress:

• FANPSE: Annual congress of neuropsychology in Spain (Madrid)
• ISB15: biannual symposium of bilingualism (San Sebastian)
• AAIC25: Most important conference of Alzheimer’s disease in the world (Toronto).
• FESN25: Annual European congress of neuropsychology (Leipzig)

The next step after publishing the article measuring the cognitive impact of bilingualism in healthy senior adults is to analyse neuroimaging results. We have structural, morphological and functional Magnetic Resonance Image data of a subsample of the ALFA cohort (ALFA+) already pre-processed and structured ready for the analysis. We will first study each neuroimaging result separately and then integrate the three methodologies using a Multilayer Network Analysis based on Casas-Roma et al., (2022)