What the SERL team have been up to:
Sleep Monitoring Workshop
Dr Anna Joyce, Lilas external collaborator, visited the SERL team at IOE and delivered a workshop on non-invasive sleep monitoring for toddlers, children and adults with neurodevelopmental disorders.
Anna drew from her rich experience as the theme leader for the Sleep research group within the Brain, Belief and Behaviour lab at Coventry University.
First, Anna explained the importance of sleep research and the ways we can improve achievement & quality of life for individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders and their families.
Then she explained different ways we can measure and analyse their sleep such as actigraphy, pulse oximetry and cardiorespiratory polygraphy.
Empowering families with Autism : the voice of the sibs
Georgia Pavlopoulou, Msc, Ph.D student and Family and School co-ordinator at LiLas visited West Ham Lane Health Centre (East London, NHS) and gave training on ways to empower families with Autism.
She explained our teams efforts on promoting research which is concentrated on the everyday needs of people with a range of neuro-deveopmental disabilities and their families and draw from her Ph.D research advocating for Family Empowerment and Community Involvement of people with Autism and their Families though emancipatory research.
The main points discussed with the health care professional team included the primacy of shifting the balance between vulnerability & resilience in families living with Autism, work WITH rather ON families and what can we learn by examining the sibling experience. The latter could be approached by validating family members' experiences and also planning for overcoming experiences that remain to be struggle for children and families living with Autism, for example sleep, school, and respite time.
SERL is part of UCL-University College London, Directed by Dr .Dagmara Dimitriou promoting high quality research which is concentrated on the everyday needs of people with a range of neuro-deveopmental disabilities and their families.
Find us on twitter @UCL_SERL
Sample of Relevant papers ;
Ashworth, A., Hill, C.M., Karmiloff-Smith, A., and Dimitriou, D. (2014a) “Sleep Enhances Memory Consolidation in Children.” Journal of sleep research 23 (3), 302–8.
Ashworth, A., Hill, C.M., Karmiloff-Smith, A., and Dimitriou, D. (2014b) “The Importance of Sleep: Attentional Problems in School-Aged Children With Down Syndrome and Williams Syndrome.” Behavioral sleep medicine 15, 1–17.
Ashworth, A., Hill, C.M., Karmiloff-Smith, A., and Dimitriou, D. (2013) “Cross Syndrome Comparison of Sleep Problems in Children with Down Syndrome and Williams Syndrome”. Research in Developmental Disabilities 34, 1572–1580.
Dimitriou, D., Hill, C.M., Ashworth, A., and Karmiloff-Smith, A. (2013) “Imparied Sleep-Dependent Learning in Children with Williams Syndrome”. Pediatrics Research International [online] (2013), 1–10.
Annaz, D. and Ashworth, A. (2011) “Sleep-Related Learning in Williams Syndrome”. in Neurodevelopmental Disorders across the Lifespan: A Neuroconstructivist Approach. ed. by Farran, E.K. and Karmiloff-Smith, A. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
