Dr Johanna Barry: Chief Investigator

I am very interested in understanding more about why children differ in their language and learning abilities. I have worked with children with a range of difficulties including profound hearing impairment and language impairment. Every child is different and standard clinical tests vary considerably in their sensitivity to the complex combinations of strengths and weaknesses that each child presents with. We hope that through this questionnaire, parents and teachers will have access to a psychometrically robust clinical tool, which will allow them to clearly assess the range of behaviours that they observe every day.

Underlying all this work is a core research interest in understanding why children with similar symptoms might end up with different diagnostic labels, such as 'specific language impairment' or 'auditory processing disorder'.

Click here to view Johanna Barry's publications.

Professor Dave Moore: Programme Leader - Auditory Development and Learning

Our group is very interested in understanding more about how what we hear is shaped by our listening and learning, and developmental experience. We want to use that knowledge to help those who have listening difficulties. One hope for the group is that this can be achieved through cleverly designed auditory training programmes.

A few years ago we completed a population based study which was designed to understand more about the relationship between auditory and cognitive skills. We wanted to identify the estimated 5% of children in the population that have a specifically auditory problem.

One of the primary conclusions of that study was that there is little relationship between auditory abilities and many of the difficulties observed in children suspected of auditory processing disorder. These findings have provided the motivation for this study.

Click here to view publications from Dave Moore's group.

Sophie Richardson: Research Assistant

I have worked for a number of years in the education sector with children who have a range of additional needs. I was very excited to join this project because I believe that the assessment tool we are developing will be useful for identifying children who need support before their difficulties have a detrimental effect on their ability to succeed in school.

I project manage the day-to-day running of the study. This includes recruiting participants nationally, database management, responding to queries from parents, schools, clinical professionals, and management of our research ethics. I also develop regular reports on the progress of the project, which includes a range of analyses of the data collected. These reports play an important role in the decision-making required for the further development of the project.