Disability Research at LiU

Disability Research at LiU includes physical as well as behavioural and social aspects of disability. The purpose of formulating disability research as a separate area of research is to identify various dimensions of functional impairments and disabilities and allow different perspectives to meet, clash and enrich each other. There are theoretical, clinical, health scientific and socio-political needs for increased knowledge.

LiU primarily conduct research in the cognitive and communication field, e.g., hearing and deafness, but also in cognitive prerequisites for communication in persons with mental disabilities, autism or cerebral palsy. The area is host to extensive knowledge on specific cognitive functions and how they relate to communicative competence in disruptive situations, or integration and understanding of complex information. Disability research which specializing in special education applications is well represented in the fields of reading, writing and mathematics.

Examples of projects include research on the hearing impaired and deaf children's cognitive, linguistic and communicative development. A more applied research concerns the interplay between work-related noise, the type of task, cognitive ability and hearing ability. In a couple of projects, the focus of study is prospective memory in individuals with learning disabilities, who often have trouble remembering actions to be undertaken in the future (prospectively). Additional research projects examine how sign language use affects cognitive and linguistic functions and conditions for communication and other basic abilities such as reading and mathematics.

People with a hearing impairment quickly become tired in noisy environments, even with hearing aids. Several ongoing studies aim at characterizing and measuring the cognitive reserve capacity or the mental capacity that is left when a person has understood a message and how understanding is supported by the context.

Linnaeus Centre HEAD is a 10-year research grant for interdisciplinary research and problem-oriented research on individuals with hearing impairment or deafness. HEAD stands for HEaring And Deafness. HEAD Graduate School is a collaboration between the universities of Linköping and Örebro within the Swedish Institute for Disability Research (SIDR).

Professor Mikael Heimann heads the research group for Developmental Psychology. Examples of research on children/adolescents/young adults with different developmental prerequisites include studies related to autism, hearing impairments, cerebral palsy, dyslexia, learning disabilities as well as health and stress. Professor Gerhard Andersson heads the research group for the Internet, health and clinical psychology.
 
The research team is working in a variety of areas such as anxiety, depression and health problems such as tinnitus and chronic pain. It also focuses on the psychological aspects of health problems which include cognition, epidemiology and neuropsychology. Professor Björn Gerdle has started a "Pain Research Centre" within the framework of the SIDR. A preliminary vision for the Pain Research Centre is: from biochemistry to society in a biopsychosocial perspective.
 

Research

• Internet, health and clinical psychology research group
• Swedish Institute for Disability Research
• Linnaeus Centre HEAD
• Rehabilitation Medicine

• Researchgroup for developmental psychology