Debra Jared, Western University
Associate Professor
Psychology
London, Ontario
djjared@uwo.ca
Office:
(519) 661-2111 ext. 84631
Expert In
Bio/Research
As an undergraduate I completed concurrent B. A. (Psychology) and B. Ed. (Primary-Junior) degrees at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. My common interest in these two programs was in how people develop into skilled readers. In 1983, I began graduate studies with Mark Seidenberg at McGill U...
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Bio/Research
As an undergraduate I completed concurrent B. A. (Psychology) and B. Ed. (Primary-Junior) degrees at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. My common interest in these two programs was in how people develop into skilled readers. In 1983, I began graduate studies with Mark Seidenberg at McGill University. My graduate work focused on cognitive studies of adult word recognition, in particular on the role of phonological information in skilled silent reading and on how spelling-sound correspondences are represented in the mind. After completing my Ph. D. I went to McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario on an NSERC postdoctoral fellowship to work with Betty Ann Levy. There I continued my work on skilled word recognition, conducting studies using both words in isolation and in natural text, and began to learn about reading development. I then spent a year in Massachusetts, in Keith Rayner's lab at the University of Massachusetts where I learned to conduct eyetracking studies of reading, and in Judy Kroll's lab at Mount Holyoke College where I began work on bilingual word recognition. I joined the faculty at the University of Western Ontario in 1993. I am currently an associate professor in the department of psychology in the Cognition area. I am a member of the Language and Concepts Research Group in that area.
The goal of my research program is to understand the mental representations and processes involved in the comprehension of written words and how these change with increasing reading skill, both in monolinguals and in bilinguals. A major focus of my work has been on understanding the role of phonological information in word recognition and how spelling-sound information is represented in the mind. Another focus is on how readers understand morphologically complex words. I have also been investigating whether bilinguals activate phonological information from one or both of their languages when reading in just one language. This work is supported by NSERC.
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The goal of my research program is to understand the mental representations and processes involved in the comprehension of written words and how these change with increasing reading skill, both in monolinguals and in bilinguals. A major focus of my work has been on understanding the role of phonological information in word recognition and how spelling-sound information is represented in the mind. Another focus is on how readers understand morphologically complex words. I have also been investigating whether bilinguals activate phonological information from one or both of their languages when reading in just one language. This work is supported by NSERC.
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