Jason Yeatman
Stanford University, CA·Education Research
Learning to read draws on several underlying skills. Awareness of the sound structure of words (phonological awareness) is firmly established as critical, but the contributions of other factors, such as how children process visual information and how well they manage attention and self-control (executive functions), are still argued over.
- Fields
Education Research
Psychology
Neuroscience
- Topics
dyslexia
reading development
deep phenotyping
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Nov 2029
What they work on
- Test whether individual differences in visual processing and executive functions explain variance in word reading ability beyond phonological awareness, using online assessments in a large sample of children across more than 100 schools.
- Determine whether visual processing and executive function each reflect a single underlying factor or multiple independent factors that contribute separately to reading ability.
- Evaluate whether visual processing and executive function measures improve on conventional dyslexia screening when administered in kindergarten and first grade, using longitudinal reading outcomes.
- Extend and openly distribute the Rapid Online Assessment of Reading (ROAR) platform so that measures of reading, phonological processing, rapid automatized naming, vision and executive function can be collected at scale.
More about the research
This project sets out to describe both what is consistent and what differs across children who struggle with word reading, the difficulty known as developmental dyslexia, by measuring many traits in the same children at large scale, an approach called deep phenotyping.
Why it matters
Dyslexia screening in early grades currently rests on a narrow set of measures, and many children are identified late. By testing whether visual processing and executive function measures add predictive value in kindergarten and first grade, and by releasing the online assessments openly, this work could give schools cheaper and broader screening tools and help match children to interventions suited to their particular profile.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
C Arrington
Georgia State University, GA·Neuroscience
Test whether inhibiting the left dorsal stream with repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) slows sound processing and impairs learning and retention of similar-sounding made-up words in typical readers aged 16 to 21.
Alexander White
Barnard College, NY·Neuroscience·Early-career
Test whether skilled adult readers can recognize multiple words at once rather than one at a time, using precise vision and reading tests.
Ece Demir-Lira
University of Iowa, IA·Psychology
Test a serial mediation model in which gestational age at birth affects children's number skills through their verbal skills and then through the brain systems for numbers, measured with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS).
The school
Stanford University: 87 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 739 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.