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Communication for Children with Hearing Impairment to optimise Language Development
The World Health Assembly adopted a 2017 resolution recognising Hearing Impairment (hearing impairment) as a priority worldwide health issue. Children with hearing impairment present significant risks for language acquisition, educational achievement, socio-emotional development, and well-being. Current intervention plans fail to prepare those children for academic achievement and social participation in contemporary society where the diversity of their needs is increasing. Comm4CHILD is a consortium implementing an innovative approach for optimising the communicative skills and social inclusion of children with hearing impairment. Comm4CHILD addresses the large inter-individual heterogeneity in brain plasticity, cognitive resources, and linguistic abilities, and takes full advantage of this heterogeneity to support efficient communicative skills in children with hearing impairment. A group of 15 early stage researchers (ESRs) will be trained in research and intervention in a cross-sectoral way.
ESRs individual research projects are conceptualized within three work packages: biology (i.e. anatomical variations of the cochlea and cerebral functional reorganisation), cognition (i.e. working memory, multimodal integration in communication), and language (i.e. inter-individual differences in speech intelligibility and spelling ability). The transversal objectives of ESRs are to enhance mapping of the factors underlying heterogeneity; advance the understanding of the predictors of linguistic communicative skills; and develop new intervention methods. A strong focus on training, interactions with stakeholders and dissemination of findings shape this ITN.
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The ESRs will become the “paediatric hearing care entrepreneurs” of the future, thanks to the collaborations between academic, industrial, clinical, and community-based partners.
The output of this unique consortium is expected to have an impact across all aspects of hearing impairment children’s everyday life. Specifically, Comm4CHILD will provide a significantly improved understanding of communicative and social skills that will underpin the development of innovative future treatment and rehabilitation measures.
Beneficiaries
Partners
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Comm4CHILD is a European project under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement n°860755 within the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program.