Speaker
LIDIA INFANTE CAÑETE
UNIVERSITY OF MALAGA. SPAIN
Lidia Infante Cañete is a professor in the Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology at the Faculty of Psychology and Speech Therapy at the University of Malaga. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Malaga and a Master’s degree in Early Intervention. Currently, she combines her official teaching duties in the department with the direction of the specialized program in Expert and Master in Child Clinical Neuropsychology at UMA. Her research line is framed within the research group HUM 378, which aims to study stress and violence in childhood and adolescence. She has numerous national and international publications and has worked on research projects at the national level in the areas of child psychopathology, social competence, and family tensions. She is currently a member of the Integral Research Group in Typical and Atypical Neurodevelopment (GINTA) at the University of Alicante and the research group Learning Difficulties and Developmental Disorders (SEJ-521). She has participated in more than 50 international congresses related to educational psychology, neuropsychology, and clinical psychology. Her research interests focus on neurodevelopment and learning difficulties.
New perspectives on neurodevelopmental disorders: primitive reflexes and sensory reactivity.
Neurodevelopmental disorders can present various alterations. Some are documented through empirical studies, but others, for some reason, are not as studied and may go unnoticed in clinical assessment or intervention. Some of these alterations refer to sensory reactivity, sleep disturbances, or the presence of unintegrated primitive reflexes. All these alterations have consequences on well-being, individual development, and the family and school context, which have to manage behavioral and emotional responses (such as tantrums, avoidance behaviors, anxiety symptoms, or emotional distress) whose origins they are unaware of and, therefore, cannot competently address.
In this symposium, we present data on how the presence of unintegrated primitive reflexes forms the basis of some of the difficulties affecting perceptual processing, both in Specific Learning Disorder in reading and in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Likewise, it is shown how the prevalence of sleep disturbances and sensory processing alterations is much higher in ASD population than in neurotypical population. Finally, the Questionnaire of Risk Indicators for Autism Spectrum Disorders during the First Year of Life (CIRTEA) is presented as a screening tool to identify developmental aspects that may be related to ASD at the age of 12 months, where sensory area plays a significant role. All these studies aim to offer a new reality that allows professionals to deepen the evaluation and shape interventions that are more ecological and respectful of the individual.