We are proud to introduce so many very distinguished
speakers within the field of children and hearing impairment/deafness:
Thursday:
| ► Eva Karltorp | ► Viveka Lyberg Åhlander | ► Christine Yoshinaga-Itano | ► Ulrika Löfkvist |
| ► Mikael Heimann | ► Emily Grenner | ► Karin Brånebäck | ► Filip Asp |
Viveka Lyberg Åhlander, reg. Speech Pathologist, PhD and assistant researcher at the department of Logopedics, Phoniatrics and Audiology, Lund University. She currently has a post-doc position within the Linnaeus’ enviorment (CCL) in Lund.
Her current research focuses on how dynamic aspects of the speakers' speech (teachers' voice quality and speech rate) interact with linguistic complexity and school children’s cognitive capacities.
Her research-focus has previously been on the teacher voice in relation to the sound environment in the classroom and on the teachers' occupational and vocal health. The voice is in itself one of the teacher’s main work-tools and is one of the important instruments for classroom communication. The teaching environment includes a number of factors that can contribute to
Eva Karltorp is MD and a specialist in otorhinolaryngology and audiology. Since 2004 she is in charge of the Cochlear implant team at the ENT clinic at Karolinska University Hospital.
The cochlear implant team has both an adult and a pediatric program. The pediatric program serves more than 50 percent of the Swedish population, with around 30–40 new children receiving implants each year. Up to now 490 children have received cochlear implants at our centre and of those are 270 bilaterally operated.
Eva´s main research interests are cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection as a cause of hearing deficit, early cochlear implantation and bilateral implantation.
Her most recent project is about hearing impaired children with congenital CMV infection. The study will hopefully contribute to the question
Dr. Christine Yoshinaga-Itano is a Professor of Audiology in the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, faculty of the Institute of Cognitive Science, Center for Neurosciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Department of Otolaryngology and Audiology at the University of Colorado, Denver and the Marion Downs Hearing Center. In 1996 she developed the Marion Downs National Center.
Since 1996, Dr. Yoshinaga-Itano has assisted many state departments of education and public health agencies, schools for the deaf and blind, and early intervention programs throughout the United States and its territories.
In addition, she has served as a consultant for many countries currently developing their early hearing detection and intervention programs, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, China, Korea, Belgium,
Ulrika Löfkvist graduated as a Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) with a MSc in 2001 at Karolinska Institutet. She has worked as clinician at the Cochlear Implant Section, Karolinska University Hospital since 2002.
She is currently a PhD-student at Karolinska Institutet and member of HEAD graduate school. The objective of her PhD-project is to study lexical and semantic development in children with CI.
Other ongoing and planned research include investigation of environmental aspects like exposure of verbal stimulation from parents; additionally, to explore the impact of cause of deafness, especially CMV, for cognitive and spoken language abilities in children. Other interests are development and implementation of new habilitation tools, professional training and education.
Ulrika is a certified Listening Spoken Language Specialist Auditory Verbal Educator (LSLS Cert.
Mikael Heimann (PhD 1988, Pennsylvania State University, USA) is a professor of Developmental Psychology and Vice Dean (research) of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Linköping University, Sweden.
He has a background in child clinical psychology and was professor and Head of a Centre of Child and Adolescent Mental Health, University of Bergen, Norway, from 2001 to 2005.
Dr. Heimann’s research focuses on infant cognition (imitation, memory and attention), early social and communicative skills (e.g.: children with cochlear implant), and developmental psychopathology.
His interest also includes intervention studies aimed at increasing social interaction skills as well as literacy (e.g.: children with autism, children with suspected dyslexia, “slow readers”, and children with severe hearing disabilities).
Emily Grenner is a PhD student in speech and language pathology at Lund University. As a clinical speech and language pathologist, SL, she has primarily worked in schools, assessing and intervening language, reading and writing difficulties in children with or without hearing impairment.
Her doctoral studies are focused on developing and testing an intervention method to improve narrative writing in children with hearing impairment. The writing process and the written product both differ in children with hearing impairment compared to children with normal hearing.
Narrative writing is in itself an important genre for communicating with others. It is also a prerequisite for mastering other written genres, such as writing expository and argumentative texts, important for academic success. The intervention method is based on peer observation by use of
Karin Brånebäck is a certified and registered teacher, working with students aged 9–12 in the Stockholm area for the past 17 years. She has extensive experience in using ICT and digital media with her students. In the last three years, she has specialized in using “Flipped information” to enhance classroom interaction.
She is nationally a regularly hired speaker and consultant in teacher training programs on the use of digital media in education (and runs her company Care in IT). In implementing “Flipped information”, Karin has turned her attention to how readily available digital tools make it possible for educators to create and become useful resources for children with disabilities in the area of hearing/auditory perception and their families.
Filip Asp is an engineer in computer science and is currently undertaking his PhD-education at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.
For a decade, he has been working clinically at the Karolinska University Hospital with children using cochlear implants.
His current professional interest is in the development of ecological and objective methods for diagnosis and follow-up of hearing impaired children.
