Project leader: Shinmin Wang
Supervisors: Professor Susan Gathercole and Dr Emma Hayiou-Thomas
Many children fail to learn to read readily at the same time and with the same ease as their peers. The aim of this project, which forms the research topic for PhD student Shinmin Wang, is to investigate the cognitive origins of such difficulties in learning to read.
The main focus of the project is on the possible role in reading difficulties that is played by deficits in executive functions, a term that refers to the higher-level control of cognitive processes. Examples of executive functions are attention, planning, inhibitory control and working memory, and they are each associated with activity in the frontal areas of the brain.
In this project, a range of executive function tasks including working memory and divided attention measures are being administered to children aged between 8 and 10 years who are either struggling to read or to understand written text. Preliminary findings indicate that problems in both working memory and inhibitory control are characteristic of children with reading difficulties.
