Jane Ashby, Ed.M., Ph.D.

I investigate word recognition processes during silent reading by measuring eye movements and recording EEG. My research is situated at the intersection of reading, speech, phonological processing, and vision. I study the time course of phonological processing as well as its function in skilled word recognition and silent reading. Studies of phonological processing at the end point of reading development inform our understanding of literacy development, the goals of literacy instruction, and the relationship between phonological processing and reading fluency.

Using online measures such as eye movement registration enables the study of reading as it usually occurs in daily life - while participants silently read text for meaning. The temporal precision of eye movement data allows the examination of the complex array of cognitive processes that support reading. For example, a paper in JEP:LMC (Ashby et al., 2006) investigates the role of vowels in early word recognition during silent reading. ERP experiments complement the eye movement studies by indicating how cognitive processes unfold over time en route to word recognition. My first conjoined study using eye movements and ERPs appeared recently in JEP:HPP (Ashby & Martin, 2008).

This year, I am developing a research program at UMass, thanks to a three year grant from NIH - Child Health and Human Development. This series of experiments examines the time course of processing phonological features during skilled word recognition using ERPs and eye movements. Other projects for this year include: reviewing a web site for the National Institute for Literacy, monitoring eye movements as readers process similies and metaphors, running a pilot experiment to investigate the cognitive substrates of reading fluency in skilled readers, and co-authoring a revised edition of Rayner and Pollatsek's Psychology of Reading. In my spare time, I manage the Eye Tracking Laboratory as well as the Departmental EEG lab.

Between 2004 and 2007, I split my time between Hampshire College and UMass. At Hampshire, I developed and taught Language and the Brain, The Reading Brain, and Meanings of Literacy. I co-taught Introduction to Cognitive Neuroscience and advised senior students on their independent research projects.

My dissertation, "The nature of phonological representations in reading: Evidence from eye movements and event-related potentials" was completed in May of 2006. That research appeared in three publications: the phonological processing of vowels (JEP:LMC, 2006); a theoretical paper about prosody in silent reading (Journal of Research in Reading, 2006); a paper examining syllable effects in silent word recognition (JEP:HPP, 2008).

My Master's research examined whether readers represent syllabic structure during silent reading of meaningful sentences (Ashby & Rayner, 2004). Subsequent experiments suggest that skilled readers use elaborated phonological representations; they activate vowel, syllable, and lexical stress information en route to lexical access (Ashby et al., 2006;Ashby & Martin, 2008; Ashby & Clifton, 2005). This accumulating evidence for prosodic processing during silent reading holds implications for models of word recognition as well as for our understanding of the relationship between spoken language and reading systems. Currently, I'm interested in what ERPs and eye movement data can tell us about the nature and time course of phonological representations in skilled reading.

Earlier research examined whether average and highly skilled readers use word frequency and predictability information differently in word recognition (Ashby et al., 2005). Another aspect of this research was the relationship and time course of frequency and predictability effects in skilled reading (Rayner et al., 2004).

updated on March 21, 2008