Learning to read words: Beyond alphabetic skills. Up to 20% of Australian children experience difficulties in learning to read. Many of these children are unable to sound out words, and a focus on teaching these skills in Australian classrooms was a key recommendation of the recent National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy. However, some children make slow progress in reading despite having good sounding out skills, demonstrating that more than just this ability is needed for proficient rea ....Learning to read words: Beyond alphabetic skills. Up to 20% of Australian children experience difficulties in learning to read. Many of these children are unable to sound out words, and a focus on teaching these skills in Australian classrooms was a key recommendation of the recent National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy. However, some children make slow progress in reading despite having good sounding out skills, demonstrating that more than just this ability is needed for proficient reading. This project explores how children progress in reading once they have learned to sound out, and examines why some poor readers have difficulty doing so. The findings will inform the teaching of reading and will assist in the development of interventions for children with reading problems.Read moreRead less
Category learning and conceptual change in children. Fundamental to children's cognitive development is the ability to form concepts and generalize beyond direct experience. This project examines the effect of pre-existing beliefs and new empirical observations on concept learning by children. The cognitive processes involved when children of various ages integrate these different sources of information to form new concepts will be investigated in several knowledge domains. In addition to addre ....Category learning and conceptual change in children. Fundamental to children's cognitive development is the ability to form concepts and generalize beyond direct experience. This project examines the effect of pre-existing beliefs and new empirical observations on concept learning by children. The cognitive processes involved when children of various ages integrate these different sources of information to form new concepts will be investigated in several knowledge domains. In addition to addressing key theoretical questions about the role of exemplar diversity and sub-typing processes in concept learning the project will develop and evaluate innovative techniques for teaching science concepts to young children.Read moreRead less
Lexical retrieval and reading comprehension: Binding perceptual, lexical and conceptual information in on-line reading. Reading is a complex process that involves integrating sensory information extracted from text with stored memories about word meanings, syntactic structures and general knowledge. Most reading research has focused on the processing of isolated words, but normal reading requires integration processes that are not necessary to recognise single words. This research uses tasks req ....Lexical retrieval and reading comprehension: Binding perceptual, lexical and conceptual information in on-line reading. Reading is a complex process that involves integrating sensory information extracted from text with stored memories about word meanings, syntactic structures and general knowledge. Most reading research has focused on the processing of isolated words, but normal reading requires integration processes that are not necessary to recognise single words. This research uses tasks requiring sentence comprehension and measures of eye movements during reading to investigate how readers retrieve and combine information while reading to comprehend text. It will contribute to developing more comprehensive theories of normal reading that can inform methods of teaching reading and contribute to refinement of text recognition systems.Read moreRead less
Lexical expertise and reading skill: An experimental analysis of individual differences in written language proficiency. The Federal Government's current National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy highlights the importance of an evidence-based approach to teaching and assessing literacy. Considerable research and policy effort has been directed towards early reading programs. Much less attention has been paid to evaluating children's later development of reading comprehension and spelling pr ....Lexical expertise and reading skill: An experimental analysis of individual differences in written language proficiency. The Federal Government's current National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy highlights the importance of an evidence-based approach to teaching and assessing literacy. Considerable research and policy effort has been directed towards early reading programs. Much less attention has been paid to evaluating children's later development of reading comprehension and spelling proficiency, but there is wide diversity in these skills within the adult population that influence educational and vocational opportunity. This investigation of the factors underlying expertise in reading and spelling will provide evidence that can contribute to developing educational policy and curricula for the later stages of schooling.Read moreRead less
Phonological development in child speakers of mixed language. In Northern Territory Aboriginal communities where traditional languages are mostly spoken fluently by older people, the home language for many children is a kind of mixed language combining elements of traditional languages, Kriol and English. This project will document for the first time the sound system of this language, and investigate how children's background knowledge of this sound system prepares them to learn words in English ....Phonological development in child speakers of mixed language. In Northern Territory Aboriginal communities where traditional languages are mostly spoken fluently by older people, the home language for many children is a kind of mixed language combining elements of traditional languages, Kriol and English. This project will document for the first time the sound system of this language, and investigate how children's background knowledge of this sound system prepares them to learn words in English and traditional languages. This information is important because it can help parents, teachers and speech pathologists assess and teach Aboriginal children from mixed language backgrounds.Read moreRead less