Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE120100720
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$375,000.00
Summary
Connecting, communicating and learning through new media: Indigenous youth and digital futures in remote Australia. This project examines the sociocultural and linguistic implications of digital technologies in remote Indigenous Australia. It will provide new perspectives to support policy development for youth engagement in the digital economy, as well as cultural and educational insights that will provide an important theoretical contribution to international youth media research.
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE120102378
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$375,000.00
Summary
What shapes the structure of language? An experimental and computational investigation. How do people learn language so easily, and how is the structure of language shaped by our learning biases? This project attempts to answer these questions through an innovative combination of experimental and computational tools, with implications for technological development as well as educational interventions for both children and adults.
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE200101078
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$424,999.00
Summary
Polysyllables and Emerging Early Literacy . The aims of this research are to determine trajectories of polysyllabic word development in children with and without typical speech sound development, and examine the relationship between polysyllabic word accuracy and early literacy development. This research is significant as it will utilise innovative speech analysis techniques to identify the skills of children during a critical period of development, their transition to school. The expected outco ....Polysyllables and Emerging Early Literacy . The aims of this research are to determine trajectories of polysyllabic word development in children with and without typical speech sound development, and examine the relationship between polysyllabic word accuracy and early literacy development. This research is significant as it will utilise innovative speech analysis techniques to identify the skills of children during a critical period of development, their transition to school. The expected outcomes of this research include: (1) to establish new methods to identify children who are at risk of finding it hard to learn to read, and (2) creating the first longitudinal corpus of polysyllabic words from Australian English-speaking children with and without speech sound disorder.Read moreRead less
Tracking towards a complete model of skilled reading comprehension. This project aims to promote the development of the first complete computational model of reading comprehension. Many computational models of sub-components of reading have been developed, but none fully explain the complex co-ordination of perceptual, attentional and cognitive processes required for successful comprehension. The project intends to use eye tracking studies to test and refine Über-Reader, a new computational mode ....Tracking towards a complete model of skilled reading comprehension. This project aims to promote the development of the first complete computational model of reading comprehension. Many computational models of sub-components of reading have been developed, but none fully explain the complex co-ordination of perceptual, attentional and cognitive processes required for successful comprehension. The project intends to use eye tracking studies to test and refine Über-Reader, a new computational model that aims to provide a complete account of the memory systems and cognitive processes involved in reading comprehension and how they differ with reading skill. The outcomes will advance understanding of the causes of success and failure in reading and contribute to diagnosing and remediating reading difficulties.Read moreRead less
Tracking reading comprehension: What experts reveal about the mind. This project plans to use expert readers to provide a window on what defines optimal reading. Reading is a complex skill that requires precise coordination of cognition, perception and attention. By measuring skilled readers’ eye movements while they read sentences and short passages, the experiments are designed to investigate how individual differences in reading, spelling and vocabulary influence the timing and coordination o ....Tracking reading comprehension: What experts reveal about the mind. This project plans to use expert readers to provide a window on what defines optimal reading. Reading is a complex skill that requires precise coordination of cognition, perception and attention. By measuring skilled readers’ eye movements while they read sentences and short passages, the experiments are designed to investigate how individual differences in reading, spelling and vocabulary influence the timing and coordination of word identification and comprehension processes during normal reading and how this changes with a readers' goals. The results would distinguish between competing theories of how skilled readers balance word identification and comprehension processes, an issue that is critical to current debates about how reading should be taught.Read moreRead less
Cracking the code for skilled reading: the role of lexical quality in word and sentence reading. This project tests the hypothesis that highly skilled reading depends on precisely specified stored knowledge about written words. This project will investigate how individual diffences in reading, spelling and vocabulary among expert readers influence the time course of early orthographic and semantic processes in word identification and the pattern of lecical and contextual influences on eye moveme ....Cracking the code for skilled reading: the role of lexical quality in word and sentence reading. This project tests the hypothesis that highly skilled reading depends on precisely specified stored knowledge about written words. This project will investigate how individual diffences in reading, spelling and vocabulary among expert readers influence the time course of early orthographic and semantic processes in word identification and the pattern of lecical and contextual influences on eye movements during sentence reading.Read moreRead less
Enhancing language learning via auditory training and parent-infant interaction. This project aims to improve adult language learning. Most adults struggle to pronounce foreign speech, because their native processing skills cannot process foreign sounds. During infancy, native sound perception is tuned through listening to variants of speech sounds while interacting with care-givers. This project aims to show that adults can reprogram their processing skills if placed in the rich environment ava ....Enhancing language learning via auditory training and parent-infant interaction. This project aims to improve adult language learning. Most adults struggle to pronounce foreign speech, because their native processing skills cannot process foreign sounds. During infancy, native sound perception is tuned through listening to variants of speech sounds while interacting with care-givers. This project aims to show that adults can reprogram their processing skills if placed in the rich environment available to infants. Rigorous testing will show whether auditory training improves processing of foreign speech sounds in adults and children and leads to successful understanding and pronunciation of foreign words. This project could benefit many Australian monolingual families who have not fully engaged with neighbouring cultures due to a language barrier.Read moreRead less
A computational and experimental investigation into the organisation of letters in reading. In alphabetical languages, people need to learn to organise individual letters into groups so that they can read efficiently. This project will develop a model of this process, which will allow great insight into this key aspect of reading in terms of what the most efficient way of doing this is and what may go wrong and cause reading problems.
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE180100893
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$366,403.00
Summary
No pain no word gain: toward a new neurobiological account of word learning. This project aims to generate a novel neurobiological account of word learning, going beyond a simple mapping between words and objects and recognising the sensory and socio-communicative embedding of language. Capitalising on interdisciplinary approaches to research, this project will use state-of-the-art neuroimaging to reveal the neural architecture and mechanisms supporting contextualised sensory word learning. The ....No pain no word gain: toward a new neurobiological account of word learning. This project aims to generate a novel neurobiological account of word learning, going beyond a simple mapping between words and objects and recognising the sensory and socio-communicative embedding of language. Capitalising on interdisciplinary approaches to research, this project will use state-of-the-art neuroimaging to reveal the neural architecture and mechanisms supporting contextualised sensory word learning. The results are expected to bring about a paradigm shift in the fields of neurobiology of language and learning, having a profound impact on the practice of language teaching and improvement of language functioning.Read moreRead less