Early life
 | This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources .(May 2023) |
Castles was born in Canberra, Australia and attended St Clare's College, Canberra, finishing in 1982. She later moved to Sydney.
Anne Castles | |
|---|---|
| Born | Canberra, Australia |
| Alma mater | |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Cognitive science |
| Institutions | Macquarie University |
| Academic advisors | Max Coltheart |
Anne Castles is a cognitive scientist of reading and language, with a particular focus on reading development and developmental dyslexia. [1]
| This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources .(May 2023) |
Castles was born in Canberra, Australia and attended St Clare's College, Canberra, finishing in 1982. She later moved to Sydney.
Castles completed her honours degree in psychology at the Australian National University in 1987 and her PhD thesis at Macquarie University in 1993. Max Coltheart acknowledged her contribution to his own studies in learning to read and developmental dyslexia. [2]
Castles then commenced teaching and research at the University of Melbourne in the Department of Psychology. Returning to Macquarie University in 2007, she took up a CORE research appointment at MACCS, and in 2010, she was appointed Scientific Director of the Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science and then became Head of the Department of Cognitive Science. [3]
Castles is a member of the Council of Learning Difficulties Australia, Fellow of the Academy of Social Science in Australia (FASSA), and Chair of the Steering Committee of the NSW Centre for Effective Reading. Castles research over more than 20 years has looked into the nature, causes, and treatment of different types of reading difficulties, as well as the process of normal reading development. She has published over 100 articles and several books. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales (FRSN). [4]
Castles has been critical of the Arrowsmith Program, which has been incorporated in public and private schools in Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, [5] and is claimed to help students with learning disabilities by using research in neuroplasticity theories. [6] Castles has stated that there is "a clear lack of independent research to support the program's claims", and no study has been published in a peer-reviewed journal on the Arrowsmith program. [7]
Castles is on the editorial board of the academic journal, Scientific Studies of Reading , [8] and has produced the Free Reading Assessment Tests for teachers. [9] She has also provided extensive discussion in the media on the issue of dyslexia in school children's learning. [10] [11]
Dyslexia, previously known as word blindness, is a learning disability that affects either reading or writing. Different people are affected to different degrees. Problems may include difficulties in spelling words, reading quickly, writing words, "sounding out" words in the head, pronouncing words when reading aloud and understanding what one reads. Often these difficulties are first noticed at school. The difficulties are involuntary, and people with this disorder have a normal desire to learn. People with dyslexia have higher rates of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), developmental language disorders, and difficulties with numbers.
Dame Uta Frith is a German-British developmental psychologist and emeritus professor in cognitive development at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London (UCL). She pioneered much of the current research into autism and dyslexia. Her book Autism: Explaining the Enigma introduced the cognitive neuroscience of autism. She is credited with creating the Sally–Anne test along with fellow scientists Alan Leslie and Simon Baron-Cohen. Among students she has mentored are Tony Attwood, Maggie Snowling, Simon Baron-Cohen and Francesca Happé.
Deep dyslexia is a form of dyslexia that disrupts reading processes. Deep dyslexia may occur as a result of a head injury, stroke, disease, or operation. This injury results in the occurrence of semantic errors during reading and the impairment of nonword reading.
The Arrowsmith School is a private school in Toronto, Ontario, for children in Grades 1 to 12 with learning disabilities. The original Arrowsmith School was founded in Toronto in 1980 by Barbara Arrowsmith Young. A second location was opened in May 2005 in Peterborough, Ontario. The Eaton Arrowsmith School, which is modelled on the Toronto school and founded by Howard Eaton, was opened in 2005 in Vancouver, British Columbia with two further branches established in Canada and one in the United States between 2009 and 2014.
Catherine Alexandra McBride is a Professor of Developmental Psychology and the Associate Dean for Research for the College of Health and Human Sciences at Purdue University. She is also an Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), where she previously held the Choh-Ming Li Professorship of Psychology.
The history of dyslexia research spans from the late 1800s to the present.
Maryanne Wolf is a scholar, teacher, and advocate for children and literacy around the world. She is the UCLA Professor-in-Residence of Education, Director of the UCLA Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice, and the Chapman University Presidential Fellow (2018-2022). She is also the former John DiBiaggio Professor of Citizenship and Public Service, Director of the Center for Reading and Language Research, and Professor in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development at Tufts University. She is a permanent academician in the Pontifical Academy of Science. She was recently made an Honorary Advisory Fellow on the United Sigma Intelligence Association.
Surface dyslexia is a type of dyslexia, or reading disorder. According to Marshall & Newcombe's (1973) and McCarthy & Warrington's study (1990), patients with this kind of disorder cannot recognize a word as a whole due to the damage of the left parietal or temporal lobe. Individuals with surface dyslexia are unable to recognize a word as a whole word and retrieve its pronunciation from memory. Rather, individuals with surface dyslexia rely on pronunciation rules. Thus, patients with this particular type of reading disorder read non-words fluently, like "yatchet", but struggle with words that defy pronunciation rules. For example, a patient with surface dyslexia can correctly read regular words like "mint", but will fail when presented with a word that disobeys typical pronunciation rules, like "pint". Often, semantic knowledge is preserved in individuals with surface dyslexia.
The dual-route theory of reading aloud was first described in the early 1970s. This theory suggests that two separate mental mechanisms, or cognitive routes, are involved in reading aloud, with output of both mechanisms contributing to the pronunciation of a written stimulus.
Dynaread Special Education Corporation is a provider of dyslexia remediation services specifically designed for older struggling readers.
Dorothy Vera Margaret Bishop is a British psychologist specialising in developmental disorders specifically, developmental language impairments. She is Professor of Developmental Neuropsychology and Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford, where she has been since 1998. Bishop is Principal Investigator for the Oxford Study of Children's Communication Impairments (OSCCI). She is a supernumerary fellow of St John's College, Oxford.
Barbara Arrowsmith Young is a Canadian author, entrepreneur and lecturer. She is the founder of the Arrowsmith School in Toronto and the controversial Arrowsmith Program which forms the basis of the school's teaching method. In 2012 she published The Woman Who Changed Her Brain which combines an autobiographical account of her own severe learning disabilities and the method she developed to overcome them with case studies of learning disabled children who she claims overcame similar problems by using her method.
Usha Claire Goswami is a researcher and professor of Cognitive Developmental Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, and the director of the Centre for Neuroscience in Education, Downing Site. She obtained her Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of Oxford before becoming a professor of cognitive developmental psychology at the University College London. Goswami's work is primarily in educational neuroscience with major focuses on reading development and developmental dyslexia.
Max Coltheart is an Australian cognitive scientist who specialises in cognitive neuropsychology and cognitive neuropsychiatry.
Linda S. Siegel is an American-born psychologist and academic known for her research into the cognitive aspects of learning disabilities. She is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada where she held the Dorothy C. Lam Chair in Special Education.
Ram Frost is a professor of psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with affiliations to Haskins Laboratories in New Haven, US, and The Basque Center for Cognition Brain and Language (BCBL) in San Sebastian, Spain. He is a world leading expert on cross-linguistic differences in reading. His research on reading in Hebrew has changed the prevalent anglocentric theoretical perspectives of reading research, and has changed the educational system of Israel and its methods of teaching reading.
Paul Satz was an American psychologist, and one of the founders of the discipline neuropsychology. His research on the relationship between the brain and human behavior spanned diverse topics including laterality, handedness, and developmental disorders. He published over 300 publications, received numerous grants and awards, and established the first neuropsychology lab. Towards the latter part of his career, Satz's research interests focused more on the cognitive deficits associated with head injury, dementia, and ageing.
Kate Nation is an experimental psychologist and expert on language and literacy development in school age children. She is Professor of Experimental Psychology and Fellow of St. John's College of the University of Oxford, where she directs the ReadOxford project and the Language and Cognitive Development Research Group.
Kathleen Rastle is a cognitive psychologist and Professor of Cognitive Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London where she was previously the Head of Department of Psychology (2015-2019). Her research has made fundamental contributions to understanding of reading and learning to read.
Sharon Linda Naismith is an Australian clinical neuropsychologist who researches aging, dementia, and cognitive decline. She is the Leonard P. Ullman Chair in Psychology at the University of Sydney School of Psychology. Sharon founded the Healthy Brain Ageing Project in 2010, which focuses on modifiable risk factors for cognitive decline and dementia including depression, sleep disturbance and cardiovascular disease. In 2023, Naismith was elected to the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.
