International Conference 2024 - Keynote Speaker: PD Dr. Kristina Moll
Thursday 14 September 2023
PD Dr. Kristina Moll is a developmental psychologist. She received her master’s degree in psychology from the University of Salzburg, Austria. After PhD in Psychology at the University of Salzburg, followed by a three-year postdoc position at the University of York, UK.
Kristina qualified as professor (habilitation) in psychology at the University of Graz, Austria. Since 2013, she is working as researcher at the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics, and Psychotherapy, LMU-Hospital of the University of Munich, Germany, where she is leading the research unit and the university outpatient clinic for learning disorders.
Her research focuses on typical and atypical reading, spelling, and mathematical development, on literacy development in different orthographies, on neuro-cognitive mechanisms underlying learning disorders, and on the comorbidity of learning disorders. She is further involved in the development and evaluation of intervention programs to improve literacy skills. Since 2022, she is one of the editors of the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (JCPP) with special responsibility for reading and language disorder and related topics.
Kristina was also trained as dyslexia therapist and has set up training courses for learning therapists. She is leading the science advisory board of the German dyslexia association.
Q & A with PD Dr. Kristina Moll...
What do you love about being a researcher/educator?
To be able to follow my own interests and to decide what I want to work on. International collaborations and conferences. Transferring research findings into practice
What are you working on right now?
Topp-Spell project (Towards a developmental spelling model: Identification of cognitive precursors and processes underlying typical and atypical spelling acquisition in German). The project is funded by the German research council (DFG) and is (a) investigating early predictors of spelling development in a longitudinal study starting in kindergarten until grade 3, and (b) assessing cognitive processes and neurophysiological correlates of orthographic processing in children with spelling disorder compared to typically developing spellers.
LONDI-2 project funded by the German ministry of education and research (BMBF): Evaluation of the LONDI-platform. LONDI is offering specific information about learning disorders for different target groups (parents, teachers, school psychologists, therapists and youth welfare), and a help-system for practitioners to support them identifying appropriate diagnostic tools and intervention programs according to a child’s deficit profile.
German clinical guidelines for dyslexia and for dyscalculia Preparing new projects on the following topics: (1) Comorbidity of dyslexia and dyscalculia (2) Spelling intervention study investigating the neurophysiological predictors of effectiveness and individual response to the intervention.
Why is it important and what impact do you hope it will have?
Topp-Spell project: Previous research mainly focused on reading development, while research on spelling development and spelling disorders is still scarce. This is problematic, given that the cognitive deficits underlying spelling problems are to some extent different from those underlying reading problems. Results of the longitudinal study will improve early identification of children at risk of spelling problems and will inform about changes of predictors during development.
Part 2 of the study, which focuses on orthographic knowledge, will help to specify the deficits in orthographic processing associated with poor spelling skills.
LONDI-2 project: The evaluation of the LONDI-platform will help to improve the platform. The evaluation is based on the RE-AIM framework to assess (and based on the results improve) Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation and Maintenance of the platform. LONDI aims to provide user group specific and evidence-based information about learning disorders. It also provides a help-system that supports teachers, school psychologists and learning therapists to identify adequate diagnostic tools for a specific child, and to identify suitable intervention programs matching the deficit profile of a specific child. Clinical guidelines:
The clinical guidelines (S3-guidelines) provide evidence-based information for diagnosis and intervention of learning disorders. The guidelines ensure that practitioners apply the same diagnostic criteria for diagnosing learning disorders and offer information about effective interventions.
Where can I find out more?
Topp-Spell project:
Top Spell Spelling Development: Which Preschool Skills Predict Later Spelling Skills?
Topp-Spell: Towards a developmental spelling model: Identification of cognitive precursors and processes underlying typical and atypical spelling acquisition in German
LONDI-2 project:
LONDI-2: Evaluation, implementation and dissemination research of the online platform "Diagnostics and support of children with specific developmental disorders of school skills
Clinical guidelines:
Revision of the guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of reading and/or spelling disorder
Guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of dyscalculia
https://register.awmf.org/de/l...
https://register.awmf.org/de/l...
What other historic or current research are you particularly interested in and why?
I am particularly interested in understanding dissociations between learning disorders (including the dissociation between reading and spelling disorder) as well as the comorbidity between learning disorders (dyslexia and dyscalculia) and the comorbidity between learning disorders and other developmental disorders, such as developmental language disorder, ADHD, and emotional disorders.
My main interest is to better understand why some children develop problems in one domain only, whereas others fulfill criteria for several developmental disorders. Therefore, it is important to identify risk factors that are specific to a given disorder (e.g., dyslexia) as well as risk factors that are shared between different disorders (e.g., dyslexia and dyscalculia) and that might account for the high comorbidity rates observed between these disorders.
Understanding associations (comorbidity) and dissociations between disorders will inform theoretical models of learning disorders. At the same time this topic is of high practical relevance. A better understanding can improve early identification of at-risk children for isolated and comorbid disorders and can inform whether the same interventions are suitable for children with isolated disorders (e.g., dyslexia only) and for children with comorbid disorders (e.g., dyslexia and ADHD).
What do you hope will be researched in the future?
Although we have learned a lot about the genetic, neurobiological, cognitive and environmental risk factors underlying learning disorders in the previous decades, it is still unclear how different risk factors interact, and how their impact changes during development. I therefore hope that future research provides a better understanding of the interplay between different risk factors and how they affect symptomatology. Based on this knowledge, I hope that intervention programs can be refined to better account for a child’s individual profile. More specific interventions are likely to increase intervention effects and reduce the number of children that do not respond to intervention.
If you could recommend one book or article to a member of the public interested in dyslexia and other specific learning difficulties, it would be:
I recommend at least those two: Hulme, C., & Snowling, M. J. (2013). Developmental disorders of language learning and cognition. John Wiley & Sons. Pennington, B. F., McGrath, L. M., & Peterson, R. L. (2019). Diagnosing learning disorders: From science to practice. Guilford Publications.
Tell us something interesting!
Research: Many of my research projects focused on understanding the dissociation between reading and spelling disorder (i.e., why some children show reading problems without spelling problems and vice versa), a topic that has rarely been researched in English-speaking countries but is highly important in more consistent orthographies like German. Prevalence studies in German speaking children showed that isolated problems in reading or spelling are as common as combined reading and spelling problems. We could show that reading and spelling problems were associated with different cognitive deficits and different problems in orthographic processing, suggesting that interventions need to be symptom-specific. Indeed, we could show that reading intervention did improve reading skills but not spelling, while our spelling intervention improved spelling but not reading skills.
Of course, there are many other interesting things in the world besides research on learning disorders.
Just back from my holidays in Crete, I learned that 40% of the island are planted with olive trees, producing 150.00 – 180.00 tons of olive oil each year.
