Profile

Biography

University of York

• BSc Psychology
  

  • I received the British Psychological Society and Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology (BPS-POST) undergraduate prize (2002) for a short essay based on my final year literature survey (Three factors that can influence the success of reading intervention programmes).
    

• MSc
  

  • In 2002 I was successful in the ESRC 1+3 open studentship competition and went on to complete an MSc in Reading, Language and Cognition (2003) followed by a PhD (2007).
    

• PhD - Semantic and phonological aspects of language processing in children who have Down syndrome

  • I was awarded the K. M. Stott Prize for the best thesis in Psychology 2006/2007.

Career

2006-2007

I spent 14 months working as a research associate at Lancaster University with Dr Kate Cain investigating children's understanding of interclausal connectives.

2008 - present

I began working as a post-doctoral research fellow and project manager on the Wellcome Language & Reading Project in January 2008. 

Research

Overview

The Wellcome Language & Reading Project

 

 

This is a 5 year longitudinal investigation of the overlap between developmental dyslexia and specific language impairment. It is funded by the Wellcome trust and led by Prof. Maggie Snowling and Prof. Charles Hulme. In addition to the day-to-day management of the project my role is to investigate similarities and differences in language profiles between the groups and how these relate to literacy outcome.

 

 

 

More information about the Wellcome project can be found here

Other research interests

• Pre-school identification of children with language difficulties
• Orthographic learning
  • I am interested in the role of semantic knowledge when the phonological route to reading is compromised
• Down syndrome
  • Spoken and written word learning
  • Reading comprehension
  • The impact of health and social factors on early cognitive development
• Cross linguistic study of the overlap between SLI and dyslexia (ELDEL project)
• EEG
  • investigating letter sound integration in typically developing readers and children with dyslexia

Current projects

Wellcome Language and Reading Project (2007-2012)

 

 

 

Orthographic learning in young children at family risk for dyslexia (Nuffield undergraduate bursary in science 2009 & MSc student project 2010 )

 

The role of semantics in irregular word learning (Departmental vacation scholarship 2010)

 

 

 

 

 

Using EEG to investigate letter sound integration in typically developing readers and children with dyslexia (Wellcome trust biomedical vacation scholarship 2011)

 

Supervision

Faye Smith - year 2 (joint supervisor with Profs. Maggie Snowling & Eve Roman)

 

 

 

Publications

Full publications list

Mengoni, S. E., Nash, H. M., & Hulme, C. (submitted). Learning to read new words in children with Down syndrome: Testing the role of phonological knowledge

Nash, H., Gooch, D., Snowling, M., & Hulme, C. (submitted). Preschool Language Profiles of Children at Family Risk of Dyslexia: Continuities with SLI

Nash, H. M., & Campion, M. E. (submitted).  The role of phonological familiarity and semantic knowledge in exception word reading in children: evidence from a training study

Mengoni, S. E., Nash, H. M., & Hulme, C. (2012). The benefit of orthographic support for oral vocabulary learning in children with Down syndrome. Journal of Child Language.

Snowling, M. J., Dawes, P., Nash, H. M., & Hulme, C.  (2011 online). Validity of a Protocol for Adult Self-Report of Dyslexia and Related Difficulties.  Dyslexia.

Hulme, C., Goetz, K., Brigstocke, S., Nash, H. M., Lervag, A., & Snowling, M. J. (2011 online). The growth of reading skills in children with Down Syndrome.  Developmental Science.

Nash, H. M., & Heath, J. (2011). The role of vocabulary, working memory and inference making ability in reading comprehension in Down syndrome. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 32 (5), 1782-1791.

Nash, H. M., Leavett, R., & Childs, H. (2011). Evaluating the GAPS test as a screener for language impairment in young children.  International Journal of Language and Communication disorders, 46 (6), 675-685.

Cain, K., & Nash, H. M. (2011). The influence of connectives on young readers' processing and comprehension of text.  Journal of Educational Psychology, 103 (2), 429-441.

Snowling, M. J., Nash, H. M., & Henderson, L. M. (2008). The Development of Literacy Skills in Children with Down Syndrome: Implications for Intervention.  Down Syndrome Research and Practice.  Available on-line.

Nash, H. M & Snowling, M. J. (2008). Semantic and phonological fluency in children with Down syndrome: Atypical organisation of language or less efficient retrieval strategies?  Cognitive Neuropsychology, 25 (5), 690-703.

Nash, H. M., & Snowling, M. J. (2006). Teaching new words to children with poor existing vocabulary knowledge: A controlled evaluation of the definition and context methods. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders. 41 (3), 335-354.