Research Interests & Abilities (Keywords)

• skilled reading
• word recognition
• phonological processing
• morphological processing
• bilingual word recognition
• reading development in L2
• home literacy practices
• music and reading

Major Research Activities

The long-term goal of my research is to understand the mental representations and processes involved in the comprehension of written words and how these change with increasing reading skill. My research has examined two issues with respect to spelling-sound knowledge. The first concerns whether spelling-sound knowledge is used by skilled readers when they read silently. The second issue concerns how readers represent this knowledge in memory. Other research interests include the issue of whether bilinguals activate phonological representations from one or both of their languages when reading, the role of reading practice on word recognition processes, and how morphological units such as prefixes are represented and processed. I am participating in three CLLRNet projects on reading development. One investigates reading development in children learning to read in their second language,the second examines early literacy experiences in the home, and the third explores the relationship between music instruction and learning to read.

Network Research Projects

• Understanding Reading Development in Second Language Learners  (Project Leader)