My Profile

Biography:

I am an Associate Professor and hold a Univerity Research Chair (Level II)in Psychology at the University of Guelph and am Associate Professor in Pediatrics at the University of Toronto and Adjunct Scientist at the Toronto Hospital for Sick Children. I investigate how text literacy (reading comprehension) and numerical literacy develop and why some children have difficulty acquiring these academic skills. Text literacy (the ability to use reading to acquire new knowledge)and numerical literacy are necessary for academic and vocational attainments though less is known about the development of these skills than is known about how children learn to read words. Understanding how these skills are acquired in typically developing children and in children with learning disabilities is important for early identification of children at risk, informing educational practices, and designing evidence-based intervention programs. My CLLRNet-funded text literacy research focuses on the development of reading, language, and cognitive skills that children in different grades need to understand narrative, social science, and science texts. My clinical research involves the study of reading comprehension difficulties in children with congenital and acquired brain injuries, particularly those aspects of comprehension that involve making inferences and learning from text. My research is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Canadian Language and Literacy Research Network, and the National Institutes of Health.