Nathalie Thomas

Nathalie Thomas is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Psychology, Educational Sciences, and Speech Therapy at Université Libre de Bruxelles. She joined the faculty in 2007 and completed her PhD between 2014-2020 on the effects of interactive reading on kindergarten children and their environment. In 2022, she was awarded a mini-chair in disability psychology, focusing her research on young children with complex communication needs.

Her research interests center on interactive reading supported by augmentative and alternative communication to support literacy development in children with special needs. She also investigates school inclusion issues for students with developmental language disorder, autism spectrum disorder, and attention deficit disorder. Her work emphasizes parent/teacher-child interactions and the promotion of facilitative and supportive communicative practices in contexts of language difficulties.

Thomas's recent publications demonstrate a consistent focus on how interactive reading interventions impact language development and literacy skills, particularly among preschool children from low socioeconomic and language-minority backgrounds. Her research shows how these interventions affect narrative skills and teacher educational practices in kindergarten settings.

• Mini-chair in disability psychology (2022)

As a member of the LCLD research lab within the Centre de Recherche en Cognition et Neurosciences (CRCN), Thomas contributes to research on reading acquisition and disorders. She maintains a dedicated website (in French) on interactive reading at https://www.lectureinteractiveenrichie.com/ that serves as a resource for educators and researchers interested in this methodology.