For professionals

Referrals

Referrals to the project should be made by the school SENCO or Inclusion Manager, with parental consent. Permission from the Headteacher for research to take place in the school will also be required.

Children with identified word-finding difficulties may be put forward if they meet the following criteria:

    • Age between 6 and 8 years.
    • No other significant developmental diagnosis, e.g. autism, dyspraxia, severe stammer. However, some children may present with a wider language difficulty, e.g. specific language impairment.
    • No significant sensory or behavioural difficulties.
    • English as a main language, i.e. spoken at home by at least one adult AND child has attended English-speaking nursery since 3 years.

We are also looking for children with typically-developing language and word-finding abilities. These children should be aged between 4 and 8.

For questions relating to the project and/or our referral process, please contact:

Dr Wendy Best and Lucy Hughes

UCL Developmental Science Research Department

Chandler House, 2 Wakefield Street

London WC1N 1PF

Tel: 020 7679 2483 / 07780 702 524

Email: lucy.hughes at ucl.ac.uk

Prof Jackie Masterson

Department of Psychology and Human Development

Institute of Education, 20 Bedford Way

Tel: 020 7612 6903

Email: j.masterson at ioe.ac.uk

Conference participations

A. Fedor, S. Roncoli, W. Best, L. Hughes, J. Masterson, M. S. C. Thomas. The development of naming in children: empirical data and a computational model of lexical access. Budapest CEU Conference on Cognitive Development (BCCCD12), Budapest, 12-14 January, 2012.

A. Fedor, S. Roncoli, W. Best, J. Masterson, M. S. C. Thomas. A developmental model of vocabulary production. 13th Neural Computation and Psychology Workshop (NCPW13), San Sebastian - Donostia, 12-14, July, 2012.

A. Kapikian, W. Best, A. Fedor, L. Hughes, J. Masterson, S. Roncoli, & M. S. C. Thomas. The WORD research project: A developmental study of word retrieval. The British Psychological Society 2012 Developmental Section Annual Conference, Strathclyde University, Glasgow, 5-7 September, 2012.