Llorenç Andreu Barrachina

Catedràtic Psychology and Educational Sciences Department

Dr. Llorenç Andreu worked as a speech and language therapist in primary education. This experience oriented the subject of his future research. At this time he graduated in Psychology of Education and shortly after he moved to Barcelona to begin the Ph.D. program in Cognitive Science and Language at the Universitat de Barcelona (2005-2006). His first publications focused on the study of language acquisition both in typical and pathological populations using descriptive methodologies. In July 2010, he got the doctorate in which he started a new line of research on the application of eye movements to study language processing in children with language disorders. Shortly before getting his Ph.D., he joined the Psychology and Educational Sciences Department of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya as an assistant professor. Currently, he is a full professor and principal investigator of the NeuroDevelop eHealth Lab at the eHealth Center (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya).

Expert in::

  • Language development
  • Language disorders
  • Language processing
  • Eye-tracking
Research group
GRECIL
Area
Social sciences
Area of specialization
Languages and cultures, Digital health, Education and ICT,
Membership Center
eHealth Center

ODS:

  • 4 - Quality education
  • 3 - Health and well-being
  • 10 - Reduced inequalities

Andreu's research focuses on the study of language processing – specifically, how children with specific language impairment (SLI) carry out real-time language comprehension and production processes.

To that end, he uses various methodologies including the "visual world" paradigm based on eye tracking in language comprehension contexts, and linguistic production associated with the perception of events or objects.

He also specializes in learning difficulties and disorders.