Alfonso
Igualada

Dr Alfonso Igualada is a speech therapist with both clinical and research experience. He has a diploma in speech therapy from the University of Valencia (UV), a master's degree in Phonetics and Phonology awarded by the Spanish National Research Council and Menéndez Pelayo International University (CSIC-UIMP), a master's degree in General and Applied Linguistics from Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), where he also earned his PhD in Language Sciences. He is currently an associate professor in the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), where he is the director of the bachelor's degree in Speech Therapy. He also teaches on this course and on the master's degree in Learning Difficulties and Language Disorders. He is a practising speech therapist, specialising in language disorders and autism spectrum disorders in early childhood. He has also studied dance and theatre from a therapeutic perspective. His research focuses on language development, gestural communication, socio-communicative and pragmatic skills and the prevention, assessment and treatment of language disorders and autism spectrum disorders. He has published the results of his research in a number of journals. Within this thematic framework, his research focuses on how gestural and pragmatic skills are related to language mechanisms in situations of normative and pathological development, on developing in-depth knowledge of the diagnosis and assessment of these populations using physical systems and ICTs, and on the effectiveness of speech therapy treatments in the area, in particular socio-pragmatic treatments.