Bruno Bastos Vieira de Melo

Intentional and structured collaboration is increasingly recognised as a cornerstone of inclusive school development, enabling schools to respond to students’ diverse and evolving needs. As part of the I CO-COPE: Inclusion through Interprofessional Collaboration in a Community of Practice in Education project, which aims to develop guidelines and resources for establishing Communities of Practice (CoPs) for inclusion in European schools, this study explored professionals’ current collaborative practices and perceived needs within school communities, with particular attention to students’ role as partners in addressing inclusion-related dilemmas. Building on a previous cross-national survey and the indicators underpinning the Index on Communities of Practice for Inclusion (iCoPi) self-reflection tool, focus groups were conducted with 71 professionals from eight schools across Austria, Belgium, Portugal, and Slovakia. Findings indicate that sustainable collaboration depends on professional networks established within and beyond the school, shared professional practices, common values and language, staff stability, school autonomy, and a school culture that intentionally cultivates students’ self-determination and participation. Although opportunities for listening to students were widely established, their involvement in implementing decisions remained confined to punctual and structured initiatives. Overall, professionals’ reflections on collaboration converged towards a common architecture that closely reflects the constitutive principles of CoPs. The findings highlight the need to strengthen collaborative coordination, embed collaboration within school culture, and systematically cultivate students’ self-determination as baseline conditions for establishing Communities of Practice and advancing inclusive school development.

Background: Young people with intellectual developmental disabilities have a persistent delay in the development of executive functions. Virtual reality (VR) is increasingly being used as a cognitive intervention tool, with significant effectiveness demonstrated in different types of populations. Methods: This pilot study aims to investigate the impact of a cognitive training program utilizing VR on young adults diagnosed with intellectual developmental disabilities (IDDs). The participants (N = 15) served as their own control group and were assessed three times: weeks 0, 8, and 16, with a rest period (0–8 weeks) and an intervention period (8–16 weeks). The assessments included measures of cognitive function provided by E-Prime^® (Version 3). Results: Overall, an improvement in working memory and inhibitory control was found after the intervention, but not in sustained attention. Conclusions: These findings suggest that VR-based cognitive training holds promise as an effective intervention for enhancing cognitive abilities in young adults with intellectual developmental disabilities. This study provides a foundation for future investigations into VR’s role in cognitive rehabilitation and its potential to support daily living skills and overall quality of life for individuals with IDDs. Further research is needed to explore the long-term effects and broader applicability of VR interventions.

Background: Young people with intellectual developmental disabilities have a persistent delay in the development of executive functions. Virtual reality (VR) is increasingly being used as a cognitive intervention tool, with significant effectiveness demonstrated in different types of populations. Methods: This pilot study aims to investigate the impact of a cognitive training program utilizing VR on young adults diagnosed with intellectual developmental disability (IDD). The participants (N=15) served as their own control group and were assessed three times: weeks 0, 8 and 16, with a rest period (0-8 weeks) and an intervention period (8-16 weeks). The assessments included measures of cognitive function, provided by E-Prime®. Results: Overall, an improvement in working memory and inhibitory control was found after the intervention, but not in sustained attention. Conclusions: These findings suggest that VR-based cognitive training holds promise as an effective intervention for enhancing cognitive abilities in young adults with intellectual developmental disability.

BACKGROUND Virtual Reality (VR) is a technology that is increasingly being used to assess and intervene in executive functions such as inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility. These functions have a relevant impact on participation in occupations and on the analysis of behavior in participation. OBJECTIVE The present study aims to determine the normative values of executive functions, more specifically cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control, in young people aged 12 to 16 years in the performance of Virtual Reality (VR) games. METHODS The sample, obtained by convenience, consists of 164 adolescents between 12 and 16 years old. For this study, a session with VR games was conducted and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) was performed on a computer. RESULTS Significant differences (p=.002) were found for age, with a cut-off point between 13 and 14 years old. Regarding sex, no significant differences were found. Furthermore, although the VR game and the WCST focus on the same executive functions there was a positive but not significant correlation between them. CONCLUSIONS This study has shown that age has an influence on the performance of tasks that involve cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control since these skills are still under development during adolescence. It should also be noted that the use of VR is an added value due to the motivation it triggers in those who play.

Financial literacy has been recognised worldwide as a way to confront social inequalities in work access, own financial control and education, particularly among vulnerable groups. People with disabilities, especially those with intellectual and developmental disabilities, experience additional challenges accessing opportunities to learn financial-related competencies. There is an extensive bibliography on this subject that stretches for decades, but this does not translate into an extensive availability of science-based programmes. To our knowledge, no comprehensive search to find the gaps in this evidence has been conducted. We conducted a scoping review that sought to identify the core goals, contents, approaches, gaps and limitations of full financial education programmes for youths and adults with disabilities. Seven publications met the inclusion criteria, which included implementation of programmes that embrace a multidimensional set of skills. Selection and categorisation of the programmes’ contents were conducted independently by three researchers. Findings suggest that money and transactions is the content most consistently addressed in the programmes designed for persons with disabilities. A stronger focus on self-determination skills is needed to support financial-related decision-making and self-advocacy. The results indicate that the use of approaches based on Universal Design for Learning, problem-based learning and the combined use of simulated and community-based instruction are critical strategies to support access to financial competencies. Gaps and future orientations include the need to broaden the number of studies that implement and evaluate programmes considering the multidimensional nature of the financial competencies and its critical role for social inclusion of people with disabilities.

The main purpose of this manuscript is to critically review the Multisensory Integration (MI) training programs applied to older adults, their characteristics, target sensory systems, efficacy, assessment methods, and results. We also intend to propose an integrated framework to support combined interventions of neurocognitive and sensory training. A critical review was conducted covering the most relevant literature on the MI training programs applied to older adults. Two MI training programs applied to cognitively healthy older adults were found: (a) audio-visual temporal discrimination training and (b) simultaneity judgment training. Both led to the improvement of the MI between pre-and post-training. However, only the audio-visual temporal discrimination training led to the generalization of the improvements to another MI task. Considering the relationship between the sensory and the cognitive functioning, this review supports the potential advantages of combining MI with neurocognitive training in the rehabilitation of older adults. We suggested that this can be achieved in the frame of the Branched Programmed Neurocognitive Training (BPNT). Criteria for deciding the most suitable multisensory intervention, i.e. MI or Multisensory Stimulation, and general guidelines for the development of MI intervention protocols with older adults with or without cognitive impairment are provided.

Introduction: Age-related changes in sensory functioning impact the activities of daily living and interact with cognitive decline. Given the interactions between sensory and cognitive functioning, combining multisensory integration (MI) assessment with the neuropsychological assessment of older adults seems promising. This review aims to examine the characteristics and utility of MI tasks in functional and cognitive assessment of older adults, with or without neurocognitive impairment. Areas covered: A literature search was conducted following the quality assessment of narrative review criteria. Results focused on tasks of detection, discrimination, sensory illusion, temporal judgment, and sensory conflict. Studies were not consensual regarding the enhancement of MI with age, but most studies showed that older adults had an expanded time window of integration. In older adults with mild cognitive impairment or major neurocognitive disorder it was a mediating role of the magnitude of visual-somatosensory integration between neurocognitive impairment and spatial aspects of gait. Expert opinion: Recently, some concerns have been raised about how to maximize the ecological validity of the neuropsychological assessment. Since most of our activities of daily living are multisensory and older adults benefit from multisensory information, MI assessment has the potential to improve the ecological validity of the neuropsychological assessment.

Date Presented 04/05/19 Neuroanatomical differences in ADHD is one of the most investigated topics. Therefore, we aimed to identify these differences through the first published Systematic Overview of Systematic Reviews, using Cochrane guidelines and PRISMA to criteria. We propose a hypothesis of an unbalanced multinetwork neurofunctioning and the scientific evidence that OT must be integrated in primary-care teams to assess how a multiskill involvement impacts functional and occupational performance. Primary Author and Speaker: Bruno Vieira de Melo Contributing Authors: Maria João Trigueiro, Pedro Rodrigues

Objectives: This article seeks to identify neuroanatomical differences in ADHD through an overview of systematic reviews that report encephalic differences compared to a control group in volume, area, activation likelihood or chemical composition. Methods: We conducted a systematic search using Cochrane guidelines and PRISMA criteria in PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects. Results: Results revealed broad encephalic involvement that includes a functional frontal and cingulate hypoactivation and structural differences in corpus callosum, cerebellum and basal nuclei. Conclusions: ADHD symptoms might be due to a multi-network unbalanced functioning hypothesis.