Joan Guàrdia Olmos

Narrative comprehension and production in children with SLI: An eye movement study

This study investigates narrative comprehension and production in children with specific language impairment (SLI). Twelve children with SLI (mean age 5;8 years) and 12 typically developing children (mean age 5;6 years) participated in an eye-tracking experiment designed to investigate online narrative comprehension and production in Catalan- and Spanish-speaking children with SLI. The comprehension task involved the recording of eye movements during the visual exploration of successive scenes in a story, while listening to the associated narrative. With regard to production, the children were asked to retell the story, while once again looking at the scenes, as their eye movements were monitored. During narrative production, children with SLI look at the most semantically relevant areas of the scenes fewer times than their age-matched controls, but no differences were found in narrative comprehension. Moreover, the analyses of speech productions revealed that children with SLI retained less information and made more semantic and syntactic errors during retelling. Implications for theories that characterize SLI are discussed.

The formulation of argument structure in SLI: an eye-movement study

This study investigated the formulation of verb argument structure in Catalan- and Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing age-matched controls. We compared how language production can be guided by conceptual factors, such as the organization of the entities participating in an event and knowledge regarding argument structure. Eleven children with SLI (aged 3;8 to 6;6) and eleven control children participated in an eye-tracking experiment in which participants had to describe events with different argument structure in the presence of visual scenes. Picture descriptions, latency time and eye movements were recorded and analyzed. The picture description results showed that the percentage of responses in which children with SLI substituted a non-target verb for the target verb was significantly different from that for the control group. Children with SLI made more omissions of obligatory arguments, especially of themes, as the verb argument complexity increased. Moreover, when the number of arguments of the verb increased, the children took more time to begin their descriptions, but no differences between groups were found. For verb type latency, all children were significantly faster to start describing one-argument events than two- and three-argument events. No differences in latency time were found between two- and three-argument events. There were no significant differences between the groups. Eye-movement showed that children with SLI looked less at the event zone than the age-matched controls during the first two seconds. These differences between the groups were significant for three-argument verbs, and only marginally significant for one- and two-argument verbs. Children with SLI also spent significantly less time looking at the theme zones than their age-matched controls. We suggest that both processing limitations and deficits in the semantic representation of verbs may play a role in these difficulties.

A Structural Equation Model for Analysis of Factors Associated with the Choice of Engineering Degrees in a Technical University

Many different factors are taken into account by students when choosing a degree and university. Some of these are general considerations, such as the quality of the degree course (ratio of available places/places in first choice, cut-off mark, etc.), while others are subjective factors (e.g., friends doing the same course). This paper presents a partial multivariate model that considers the weight of the different variables linked to this decision, as identified in the bibliography. We analyzed four samples of first-year students (total ) from different engineering degree courses at the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia (UPV) in the 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 academic years. All the students involved in the study had chosen this university and their courses as their first option. The overall effect shows that the structural model adjusts reasonably well to the different engineering courses analyzed. Similarly, the individual models for each engineering degree manage to identify the different effects involved. In the case of the engineering degree based on new technologies (ICT), the statistical effects are much greater and more statistically significant than in the other three branches of engineering considered. Social and individual factors were seen to have more impact on the choice of ICT degrees at the UPV.

Psychometric study of a questionnaire for the assessment of factors associated with the choice of degrees and universities in the Spanish public system

Many different factors are taken into account by students when choosing a degree and University. Some of these are general considerations, such as the quality of the degree course, ratio of available places and places in the degree course chosen as first choice, cut-off mark, etc. Others are subjective factors, such as friends studying the same degree or studying in the same university, etc. Knowledge of these factors and the importance given to them by students can provide a competitive advantage when carrying out activities aimed at advertising and attracting students. This paper presents a psychometric study of a questionnaire that has been developed to assess variables relating to social and personal aspects involved in the selection process and accessing the Spanish public university system. The questionnaire was evaluated by means of a pilot test, the results of which were used to generate a final scale, which was administered to a total of 1532 students from eight Spanish universities. These students can be divided into six major areas of training and courses from 2009--10 up to 2012--2013. All the students had recently graduated from high school and were in their first year at the university. The results showed that the reliability of the both the six factors taken into consideration (Consideration of the University; Perceived Utility; Social Impact; Vocational Aspects; Influence of Surroundings and Geographic Location) and an adjustment of the Confirmatory Factor Analysis used to estimate construct validity was high. Likewise, the results show high discrimination validity between groups defined by relevant variables such as gender or academic area of the university studies.

Factors related with the university degree selection in spanish public university system. An structural equation model analysis

Students take into account different factors in their choice of university studies and college. Some are global, as the quality of the degree (ratio available places/firstchoice places in, cut-off grade, etc.), and others are subjective factors (e.g.: my friends are also taking this degree). In this work we present a partial multivariate model that takes into account the weight of the different variables shown by different works linked to this decision. We have studied three samples (

Gender differences in positive perceptions, anxiety, and depression among mothers and fathers of children with intellectual disabilities: a logistic regression analysis

n = 372

Normalidad, semiología y patología neuropsicológicas: programa integrado de exploración neuropsicológica "Test Barcelona"

n=372 from the Universidad Pablo de Olavide;