Next September, the Spanish Society of Epidemiology will hold its 43rd Annual Meeting in Las Palmas. The Health Behavior Studies Unit of the National Center for Epidemiology (Carlos III Health Institute) has organized a thematic panel on “Behavioral Studies for Better Health,” where we hope to present our paper entitled “E-cigarette Use and Smoking Cessation Among the General Population in Spain: A Behavioral Science Perspective.”

The abstract we have submitted shows the results of a cross-sectional observational study based on microdata from current smokers (4,178 daily and 460 occasional smokers) and former smokers (5,379) interviewed as part of the European Health Survey in Spain (EES-2020). The association between smoking cessation (currently smoking vs. having quit smoking) and e-cigarette use, social support (poor, moderate, or strong on the Oslo scale), age, and occupational social class was assessed using bivariate (comparison of proportions) and multivariate (binary logistic regression) analyses for women and men separately.

This study is part of one of the components of the project Behavior Design and Public Health: Explaining Unassisted Smoking Cessation, which I am currently working on.

We have begun recruiting participants for the qualitative substudy of the project “Behaviour Design and Public Health: Explaining Unassisted Smoking Cessation.” If you have quit smoking, or know someone who has quit smoking in the last two years, you can help us.

We have posted announcements on social media (LinkedIn, X, Bluesky) and in e-newsletters asking for your participation in our study. To help us, simply access  THIS LINK to answer a few screening questions and, if possible, provide us with an address so we can schedule a brief online interview of less than 30 minutes.

During this year, I have been participating alongside a group of researchers from Greece to apply for funding under the ERASMUS+ program for a research project on the use of AI in speech therapy interventions with children. My role has involved searching for schools in Spain that are interested in collaborating on the project. Currently, we are waiting for the funding decision. If the program is accepted, I will be part of it

I will be presenting a póster from the systematic review on Theory of Mind development in the online Ag Bell International Symposium.

Dates: 25-26 June

I will be presenting a póster from the systematic review on Theory of Mind development in the next AELFA-IF congress 2025, in Salamanca.

Dates: 26-28 June 2025

At the moment I am working in the design of my first study that will start on June. I will assess Theory of Mind using a new developed task of second order false belief to deaf and hard of hearing children (from 7 to 10 years) and typical hearing children (control group). 

Dates: jun 2025 – dec 2025

This subject has helped me strengthen my knowledge in statistics, experimental designs, and inferences. The learning will allow me to apply data analysis techniques to my first study

Dates: sep 2024 – feb 2025

This workshop helped me a lot on learning how to structure an academic article, how to work efficiently towards completing an article, And to choose and interact with journals. I was working on a paper and the assignments have allowed me to make progress in writing and improving the article. Also the interaction with other colleagues and their work was a great opportunity to learn.

Dates: sept 2024- jan 2025

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.