Catherine Penney, Memorial University of Newfoundland

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Professor Psychology St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador cathpenn@play.psych.mun.ca Office: (709) 864-7687

Bio/Research

My current research interests are on how children and adults learn to read, and the cognitive and linguistic deficits that make literacy acquisition difficult. I am interested in studying dyslexia and how possible deficits in echoic memory, word retrieval, phoneme perception, and phonological awa...

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Bio/Research

My current research interests are on how children and adults learn to read, and the cognitive and linguistic deficits that make literacy acquisition difficult. I am interested in studying dyslexia and how possible deficits in echoic memory, word retrieval, phoneme perception, and phonological awareness might contribute to failure in literacy acquisition. My current research is focused on tracing the developmental sequence of various phonological skills and the development of the alphabetic principle in young children and older dyslexics.

In terms of applied research, I have developed a technique for teaching decoding skills and spelling to people of all ages who cannot read or who have low literacy levels. I am interested in investigating how and why this method works, and in doing intervention studies to determine the effectiveness of the method in improving decoding and spelling skills, reading speed, reading comprehension, and writing skills.



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