Anne Castles
| Anne Castles | |
|---|---|
| Residence | Australia |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Fields | Cognitive Science |
| Institutions | Macquarie University |
| Alma mater | University of Melbourne |
| 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]
Early life
Castles was born in Canberra, Australia and attended St Clare's College, Canberra finishing in 1982. She later moved to Sydney.
Education
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]
Research
She 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 70 articles and several books.
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,[4] and is claimed to help students with learning disabilities by using research in neuroplasticity theories.[5] 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.[6]
Castles is on the editorial board of the academic journal, Scientific Studies of Reading[7] and has produced the Free Reading Assessment Tests for teachers.[8] She has also provided extensive discussion in the media on the issue of dyslexia in school children's learning.[9][10]
Works
- Castles, A., & Nation, K. (Eds.). (2008). Orthographic Processes in Reading. Special issue of the Journal of Research in Reading. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing
- Friedmann, N., & Castles, A. (2013). Reading impairments: Dyslexias in Hebrew. In G. Khan (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics. Boston: Brill Academic.
- Castles, A. & Nation, K. (2006). How does orthographic learning happen? In Andrews, S. (Ed.), From inkmarks to ideas: Challenges and controversies about word recognition and reading (pp. 151–179). London, UK: Psychology Press.
- Castles, A., Davis, C. & Forster, K.I. (2003). Word recognition development in children: Insights from masked priming. In Kinoshita. S. & Lupker, S. (Eds.), Masked priming: State of the Art (pp. 345–360). London, UK: Psychology Press.
- Coltheart, M. Bates, A. and Castles, A. (1994). Cognitive neuropsychology and rehabilitation. In Humphreys, G.W. & Riddoch, M.J. (Eds.), Cognitive Neuropsychology and Cognitive Rehabilitation. London: Lawrence Erlbaum.
References
- ↑ Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia
- ↑ Patrick Rabbitt, Inside Psychology: A Science Over 50 Years, Oxford University Press, 2009 p.69.
- ↑ Macquarie University Department of Cognitive Science Member Profile
- ↑ "Schools That Offer the Arrowsmith Program". Arrowsmith School. Archived from the original on 25 July 2011. Retrieved 2011-09-01.
- ↑ Barbara Arrowsmith 1978, The Woman Who Changed Her Brain
- ↑ The Age Experts question Arrowsmith learning program 5 November 2012
- ↑ 2014 Society for the Scientific Studies of Reading
- ↑ Castles and Coltheart Test 2 (CC2)
- ↑ Dani Cooper, ABC, News in Science 'Dyslexic condition turns slime into smile' Friday, 3 August 2012
- ↑ Ability to read and spell 'inherited' The Age 20 September 2006